HOME,  SCHOOL  AND 
VACATION 

A   BOOK.  OF  SUGGESTIONS 


M 


ANNIE  WINSOR  ALLEN 


.^ 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 

Form  L  1 

LC 

31 
A4£ 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


JUL  1925 

NOV  1  8  1925 


DEC  2     1920 

JAN   5      1927 
JAN  2o  1928 


Form  L-9-15»--8,'24 


HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 


HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND 
VACATION 

A  BOOK  OF  SUGGESTIONS 

BY 

ANNIE  WINSOR  ALLEN 


^£4  2. 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

itOS  Af&GBliHS,  CRlx. 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

($be  iFliber^ibe  prej#,  Cambriboe 

1907 

G      1908 


COPYRIGHT,   1907,   BY  ANNIE  WINSOR  ALLEN 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  November  IQ07 


CONTENTS 

Pakent  and  Expert 3 

The  Nature  of  Schooling 22 

A  General  Scheme  of  Education  .        .        .        .39 
A  Few  Simple  Facts      ......        54 

Pedagogic  Theories 66 

Home  Teaching  in  Babyhood       ....        89 

Good  Reading 105 

Discipline 116 

Amusements 160 

Health 200 

A  Table  of  Beginnings 203 

Index    .         » 213 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

ItOS  ANGBUES,  CHI*. 


THIS  BOOK  OWES  ITS  SUBSTANCE  TO  INNUMERABLE 
MEN  AND  WOMEN  WHO  HAVE  SOUGHT  IN  EVERY  AGE 
THE  TRUE  PURPOSE  OF  EDUCATION.    AMONG  SUCH  WAS 

JOHN  LOVELL 

MASTER    OF    THE    BOSTON    LATIN  SCHOOL 

1734  to  1775 

TO    HIS    WISDOM    I    AM    MUCH    INDEBTED.      SUCH    ALSO 

ARE   THOSE   WHOSE   UNTIRING   AID    HAS    GIVEN 

TO  THAT  PURPOSE  THIS  PRESENT  EXPRESSION. 

I   DEDICATE  THIS   BOOK  TO   ALL 

THOSE  WHO  ARE  OF  LIKE  MIND  WITH   US. 


//  youth  be  grafted  straight  and  not  awry,  the  whole  com- 
monwealth will  flourish  thereafter. 

Roger  Ascham. 


This  book  contains  nothing  novel  or  original.  It 
is  merely  a  collection  or  codification,  as  it  were, 
setting  forth  in  orderly  form  the  well-established 
commonplaces  and  essentials  of  a  sound  education, 
as  they  have  been  known  and  practiced  in  all  wise 
communities  from  the  beginning,  and  as  they  are 
still  practiced  in  successful  homes  and  schools, — 
homes  and  schools,  that  is,  which  are  successful  in 
giving  the  world  valuable  citizens  of  more  than 
merely  natural  good  sense  and  efficiency. 

The  vocabulary  has  been  chosen  solely  for  conven- 
ience, in  order  to  secure  clearness  within  the  covers, 
and  consists  merely  of  ordinary  words  in  their  ordi- 
nary significance.  A  nice  nomenclature,  exact,  sys- 
tematic, and  scientific,  is  impossible  to  the  subject. 
I  have  attempted  only  to  make  my  terms  comprehen- 
sible and  linguistically  correct.  I  trust  that  they 
are  consistently  used  and  adequately  defined. 


The  book  was  begun  as  an  assistance  to  myself, 
to  make  a  clear  path  before  me,  and  I  hope  it  may 
help  others  to  see  their  own  way  among  the  dis- 
tracting opportunities  of  modern  educational  theory 
and  practice.  To  me  we  seem  just  now  to  be  liv- 
ing in  a  great  educational  metropolis,  with  myr- 
iads of  artificial  attractions  and  conveniences  but  a 
plentiful  lack  of  fresh  air  and  open  ground.  We 
need  to  make  a  clearing  promptly,  in  order  that  the 
children  who  are  this  year  too  young  to  go  to  school 
may  come  upon  kindlier  and  more  wholesome  times. 

A.  W.  A. 

White  Plains,  July  1,  1907. 


HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 


blME  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

UOS  AfiCEIlES,  CHfc. 

PARENT  AND  EXPERT 

Parenthood  is  not  a  profession.  A  pro- 
fession is  a  means  of  livelihood,  chosen  to 
serve  some  specific  secondary  need  of  the 
community.  Parenthood  is  not  a  means  of 
livelihood;  it  is  a  primary  part  of  life  itself, 
and  its  duties  and  preoccupations  are  not 
chosen;  they  come  like  eating  and  sleeping, 
working  and  loving,  natural  necessary  parts 
of  a  full  absorbing  life.  These  duties  and  pre- 
occupations can  never  be  counted  and  named, 
never  be  systematized,  never  be  fully  fore- 
seen. Therefore  it  is  that  parents  can  never 
,  be  experts.  Experts  are  persons  of  perpetu- 
al* ally  reiterated  experience  in  some  one  especial 
tj  matter.  The  experience  of  any  parent  in  the 
matter  of  guiding  children  is  limited  to  one 
or  a  dozen  in  his  own  family.  No  one  can 
collect  statistics  and  deduce  fixed  principles 
from  such  a  restricted  number  of  cases.  As 
well  we  might  talk  of  an  expert  in  living.  Each 


4        nOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

of  us  has  but  one  life  and  comes  a  novice  to 
every  new  phase.  Real  skill  cannot  be  gained 
where  experiences  never  repeat  themselves 
and  opportunities  never  come  twice  alike. 

A  sense  of  this  insuperable  inexperience 
is  what  makes  most  parents  stand  helpless 
before  the  array  of  conflicting  expert  advice 
which  is  proffered  them  to-day  on  all  the 
problems  of  their  children's  growth  and 
guidance.  This  is  why  parents  who  have 
enough  money  believe  it  their  duty  to  employ 
one  from  each  kind  of  expert  skilled  in  chil- 
dren's affairs.  They  intend  that  no  amateur 
mistakes  shall  warp  their  child's  development 
or  risk  his  safety.  This  is  why  so  many  well- 
to-do  children  are  accompanied  always  by 
some  adult,  and  are  definitely  taught  every- 
thing that  it  is  desired  they  should  learn.  Ac- 
quisition of  life's  processes  and  protection 
from  the  experience  of  life's  accidents  is  hired 
for  them  by  the  hour. 

"Why  do  you  have  a  paid  companion  for 
your  ten-year-old  girl?  You  never  had  one 
for  yourself,"  the  rich  mother  is  asked ;  and 
she  answers  earnestly,  "Because   I   do   not 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  5 

dare  take  any  risks  that  I  can  avoid.  My 
parents  could  not  afford  to  pay  for  such  pro- 
tection for  me.  I  can  afford  it  for  Alice.  I 
know  that  coddling  children  is  bad ;  but  when 
you  have  the  money,  where  are  you  going  to 
draw  the  line  between  mere  coddling  and 
proper  care?" 

A  recently  installed  tutor  for  two  nice  little 
boys  of  eight  and  eleven  takes  them  to  walk 
in  the  country.  They  step  evenly  along  by 
his  side  until  he  grows  amazed  at  their  in- 
activity. '  Why  don't  you  get  up  and  run  on 
that  stone  wall?"  he  asks. 

"We've  never  been  taught  to  do  that." 

Two  little  girls  of  like  age  and  condition 
spend  two  months  learning  to  ride  the  bi- 
cycle, and  in  the  end  do  not  dare  even  mount 
without  their  teacher. 

On  a  balmy  day  in  early  spring,  when  the 
thermometer  was  at  70°,  a  sturdy  four-year- 
old  was  brought  in  to  his  mother  to  be  kissed. 
He  was  going  out  for  a  walk  in  his  full  winter 
toggery,  fur  coat  and  hood,  gloves  and  veil. 
He  received  the  kiss  and  went  out.  "Did 
n't  he  seem  too  warmly  dressed?"  said  the 


6        HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

mother  to  a  casual  caller.  "You  see  I  am 
so  helpless  with  these  nurses.  They  know  so 
much  more  than  I  do." 

For  the  same  cause,  an  uninitiated  mother, 
however  wise,  who  had  never  herself  been 
a  teacher,  is  apt  to  feel  equally  helpless  be- 
fore the  question  of  schooling  for  her  children. 
She  wants  to  do  the  best  for  them,  but  she  is 
not  sure  what  is  that  best  which  should  be 
done.  She  hears  a  deal  of  advice  and  many 
opinions.  But  the  opinions  differ,  and  the 
advice  generally  involves  dependence  upon 
experts.  But  what  she  wants  is  something 
which  shall  make  her  able  to  judge  whether 
that  expert's  methods  are  really  good.  She 
cannot  without  aversion  plan  to  put  her  child 
from  cradle  to  college  under  the  elaborated, 
uncorrected  judgment  of  the  trained  nurse, 
the  expert  kindergartener,  the  experienced 
governess,  the  psychological  pedagogue,  the 
successful  tutor,  the  famous  professor,  and 
the  leading  doctor.  She  dreads  being  reduced 
to  helplessly  loving  her  own  child,  —  and 
doing  nothing  more  for  him. 

She  looks  for  a  simpler,  pleasanter  way, 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  7 

a  way  of  common  sense,  and  a  way  that  will 
keep  her  children's  lives  within  her  own  cog- 
nizance. She  does  not  like  the  notion  of  fol- 
lowing novel,  ingenious  plans,  and  of  having 
no  authority  within  herself  which  shall  make 
her  look  unafraid  upon  an  expert,  so  that  she 
can  listen  with  composure  to  his  alarmingly 
well-assorted  ideas.  Her  inner  sense  of  the 
relations  of  things  tells  her  that  somewhere 
a  wisdom  of  parents  is  to  be  gained,  larger 
and  sounder  for  the  children  than  any  out- 
sider's wisdom  can  ever  be. 

She  is  right.  All  professional  experts  are 
outsiders,  outside  the  individual  life  for  which 
they  prescribe.  A  mother  is  not  outside.  She 
is  part  of  the  individual  life.  The  experts  are 
each  and  all  properly  zealous  and  learned  in 
their  own  callings.  Unless  she  is  equally  zeal- 
ous and  wise  in  her  responsibilities,  who  shall 
save  the  child  from  becoming  a  machine-made 
product,  or  from  being  submitted  to  a  pro- 
cess totally  unfitted  to  his  individual  needs  ? 
She  and  his  father  are  the  only  people  who  can 
know  what  the  boy  has  been  in  all  his  stages 
from  the  beginning,  and  who  can  see  him  in 


8        HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

all  his  occupations.  Parents  are  not  profes- 
sionals and  they  can  never  be  experts;  but 
they  may  have  an  undistracted,  undivided,  and 
unflagging  interest  in  their  own  particular 
child.    No  one  else  can  have  that  interest. 

This  undivided,  personal,  totally  unprofes- 
sional interest  is  necessary  as  a  balance  for 
the  teacher's  inevitable  tendency  to  become 
doctrinaire  and  to  mistake  conformity  for 
growth.  No  sincere  parents  need  stand  help- 
less before  an  educational  expert.  It  is  not 
a  parent's  part  to  propose  methods  in  school- 
ing. If  he  knows  clearly  the  ends  which  should 
be  attained,  then  the  means,  the  special  peda- 
gogic devices,  may  be  trusted  to  the  expert, 
if  he  be  a  true  expert,  not  simply  a  faddist. 
There  are  very  many  divergent  and  equally 
excellent  methods  of  attaining  an  education. 
Only  need  it  be  remembered  that  no  matter 
what  advantage,  mental,  moral,  cultural,  or 
physical,  an  educational  device  may  have,  its 
use  is  unjustified  if  it  omits  to  foster  thorough- 
ness and  self-reliance. 

Without  fail  the  parent  must  understand 
the  essentials  to  be  reached  by  the  child,  and 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  9 

must  see  that  they  are  being  pursued.  Next 
he  must  be  sure  that  the  teacher  has  a  sound, 
wholesome  mind  and  good  common-sense. 
And  third,  let  him  insist  that  the  classes  shall 
not  be  too  large.  Then  he  need  not  concern 
himself  about  Pestalozzi,  Herbart,  Gruber, 
Froebel,  or  any  of  their  recent  variants.  He 
can  leave  the  schoolmasters  to  fight  out  those 
things.  All  he  asks  is  that  his  child  arrive  at 
maturity  adequately  trained. 

But  these  three  points  are  indispensable;  a 
proper  size  to  the  classes,  a  good  quality  in  the 
teacher,  and  the  essentials  of  adequate  training. 

The  size  of  the  classes  is  of  imperative  im- 
portance. In  order  to  be  personally  taught, 
a  pupil's  mind  must  come  into  direct  commu- 
nication with  the  teacher's  mind.  If  a  class 
of  thirty  recites  to  one  teacher  for  thirty  min- 
utes, each  pupil  can  receive  one  minute  of 
the  teacher's  attention  (if  all  general  class 
instruction  is  excluded).  When  two  minutes 
are  given  to  one  pupil's  difficulties,  then  some 
other  pupil  must  go  from  the  class  with  his 
difficulties  untouched.  The  pupils  at  the 
antique  district  school  fared  better. 


10      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

The  quality  of  the  teacher  is  equally  impor- 
tant. A  brooding  or  an  impulsive  mind  is 
charming  and  has  plenty  of  use  in  the  world; 
but  neither  is  suited  for  a  teacher  of  children. 
Their  teacher  must  be  sound  and  wholesome. 
Whimsies  and  sweeping  emphatic  theories 
are  fascinating  and  valuable,  sometimes;  but 
a  child's  teacher  must  have  a  clear  head,  a 
keen  common-sense,  and  a  humorous  dislike 
of  all  over-emphasis. 

The  essentials  of  adequate  training  are 
clear  in  fact,  but  easily  obscured  by  talk. 
They  are  simplicity,  thoroughness,  and  seren- 
ity. These  must  appear  in  every  part  of  a 
child's  training. 

Neither  is  the  purpose  of  training  hard  to 
see.  Training  exists  in  order  to  foster  in  the 
child  self-use  and  balanced  powers,  self- 
reliance  and  efficiency;  the  first  two,  mainly 
for  his  own  advantage,  the  last  two  chiefly 
for  the  advantage  of  his  neighbors.  In  every 
child  the  training  has  to  act  upon 

the  muscles  the  memory 

the  senses  the  taste 

the  will  the  mind 

the  desires  the  intellect. 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  11 

In  order  to  train  these  powers  it  must  insist  with 

simplicity,  thoroughness,  and  serenity,  upon 

physical  exercise  close  attention 

alert  observation  nice  experience 

steady  discipline  careful  classifying 

good  example  independent  judgment. 

The  result  of  good  training  of  good  material 
will  be 

bodily  vigor  knowledge 

keen  perceptions  culture 

self-control  logical  thought 

right  behavior  just  understanding. 

Bodily  vigor,-  keen  perceptions,  self-con- 
trol, and  right  behavior,  an  interested  par- 
ent understands  in  substance,  and  he  is  suffi- 
ciently capable  of  judging  whether  a  school 
furthers  these  four  first  results  of  a  good 
education.  Knowledge,  likewise,  is  a  simple 
matter,  and  he  is  measurably  fitted  to  find 
out  whether  a  child  is  learning  enough  at 
school.  Culture  is  more  subtle,  and  its  actual 
existence  does  not  become  established  until 
after  the  child  is  past  all  schooling.  Even 
in  the  making,  it  is  mostly  to  be  gained  in 
social  intercourse  with  family  and  friends,  so 
that  all  that  the  parent  can  reasonably  ask  of 


12      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND   VACATION 

a  school  is  that  it  shall  give  culture  ample  op- 
portunity for  development.  Training  in  ready 
reasoning  and  just  understanding,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  exactly  what  a  school  is  well 
fitted  to  give,  and  the  parent  should  expect 
that  his  child  shall  have  constant  exercise  in 
school  of  these  most  recent  powers  of  man. 
Upon  these  depends  his  real  efficiency  as  an 
educated  human  creature.  Bodily  vigor,  keen 
perceptions,  self-control,  and  right  behavior  a 
good  dog  can  have.  A  man  may  be  well-in- 
formed and  cultivated  without  being  properly 
efficient;  he  is  commonly  enough  efficient  and 
full  of  knowledge  without  possessing  culture; 
he  can  with  fair  ease  be  efficient  and  culti- 
vated without  having  much  knowledge.  But 
the  well-educated  man  is  all  three  at  once, 
and,  of  the  three,  most  emphatically  efficient. 
We  often  fail  to  note  the  difference  be- 
tween culture  and  efficiency  in  their  relation 
to  knowledge.  For  efficiency  it  is  necessary  to 
know  thoroughly  the  skeleton  of  one  subject 
in  each  branch.  For  culture  it  is  not  necessary 
to  have  a  really  thorough  knowledge  of  any 
one  subject,  but  we  must  understand  the  out- 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  13 

line  and  character  of  the  principal  subjects 
in  each  branch.  To  be  sure,  the  more  of  this 
sort  of  knowledge  we  have,  the  more  delight- 
ful it  seems;  it  is  delightful  to  be  comfortably 
familiar  with  many  languages,  many  sciences, 
many  handicrafts,  and  many  accomplish- 
ments; but  it  is  not  in  the  least  necessary  to 
culture,  and  it  is  really  inimical  to  efficiency, 
except  for  very  rare  minds.  A  voluminous 
acquisition  of  entertaining  knowledge  may 
make  pleasures  richer  and  more  varied,  but 
it  is  apt  to  confuse  the  understanding. 

The  judicious  parent  will  feel  clearly  this 
difference  between  what  is  delightful  and 
what  is  necessary.  Education  in  every  age, 
and  clime,  and  time,  has  had  the  same  spe- 
cial aim  and  the  same  result.  It  aims  espe- 
cially to  train  the  mind  and  intellect  into  full 
efficiency  and  to  develop  the  will, —  to  help 
the  man  to  self-use  and  balanced  powers 
ruled  by  wholesome  desires.  Hiawatha,  Con- 
fucius, or  Gladstone  had  each  the  complete 
education  of  his  time  and  clime,  and  each 
gained  the  result  of  education,  —  efficiency 
and  poise.    In  education,  culture,  and  even 


14      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND   VACATION 

knowledge,  are  secondary  to  efficiency,  since 
culture  varies  in  the  same  country  with  the 
varying  generations;  and  as  for  mere  con- 
venient knowledge,  that  is  a  matter  of  imme- 
diate surroundings.  Tutored  in  the  common- 
places of  London,  we  are  at  a  loss  in  Arizona. 
Moreover,  culture,  and  even  knowledge, 
can  be  gained  at  home;  but  thorough  effi- 
ciency needs  the  help  of  a  more  formal, 
systematic  method  than  home  can  easily 
supply.  Whatever  part  of  education  can  best 
be  aided  by  formal  treatment  belongs  to 
schooling.  Whatever  needs  a  free  treatment, 
the  school  should  regard  as  outside  its  duty, 
and  if  it  admit,  should  admit  with  reluctance. 
To  strengthen  efficiencies  school  exists,  and  to 
that  purpose  it  should  adhere,  unless  forced 
by  inadequate  homes  into  doing  clumsily 
the  work  which  a  good  home  does  well.  The 
very  poor  cannot  make  good  homes.  The 
very  rich  often  do  not.  The  ignorant  like- 
wise cannot,  and  the  frivolous  do  not.  But 
intelligent,  interested,  educated  parents  can 
and  do.  Such  parents,  —  not  exceptionally 
intelligent,  professionally  interested,  or  highly 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  15 

educated  parents  only,  but  all  normally  de- 
voted parents  who  can  give  the  time  and 
thought,  —  such  parents  should  watch  the 
school  narrowly,  and  guard  against  its  en- 
croachments. For  the  normal  children  of 
normal  parents  in  normal  circumstances,  a 
school  should  not  be  a  corporate  attempt  to 
create  home  atmosphere  and  home  oppor- 
tunities. "All  the  comforts  of  home"  is  just 
what  the  school  was  not  invented  to  supply. 
For  children  and  for  elders,  home  is  the  place 
of  adjustment,  where  Rigid  System,  Public 
Convenience,  and  Strict  Impartiality,  —  the 
rulers  outside,  —  yield  to  personal  needs; 
where  the  father  can  be  comfortably  accom- 
modated according  to  his  individual  liking, 
and  the  children  be  variously  treated  accord- 
ing to  their  individual  growth  and  mood  and 
health.  But  school  represents  Necessity,  the 
impartial  force  of  public  standards,  public  ex- 
pectations, and  impersonal  circumstance.  It 
should  mean  primarily  Duty  and  Justice,  — 
not  stern  justice  and  pitiless  duty,  but  steady, 
satisfying  duty  and  even-handed  justice.  It 
should  represent  impersonal  inducements  to 


16      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

effort,  such  as  the  nature  of  the  case,  the  in- 
terest of  the  subject,  and  the  absorbing  at- 
traction of  doing  good  work.  The  teacher 
must  not  purposely  use  personal  charm  as  an 
inducement,  or  personal  affection.  Persua- 
sive vigor  and  endearing  enthusiasm  he  must 
have,  but  they  must  not  be  put  conspicuously 
in  evidence.  His  chief  dependence  must  be 
a  silent  confidence  in  the  power  and  impor- 
tance of  beautiful,  gracious,  mysterious  in- 
fluences beyond  himself,  —  the  influences  of 
order,  wisdom,  foresight,  fidelity,  growth,  and 
achievement.  Personal  affection  is  an  indi- 
vidual matter,  and  belongs  to  the  sphere  of 
friendship  and  home.  This  is  not  to  say  that 
a  child  should  not  be  fond  of  his  teacher 
and  his  teacher  respond  in  kind.  It  is  only 
to  say  that  affection  must  not  be  used  as  an 
inducement  to  work.  Schooling  means  train- 
ing, not  persuasion.  School  is  the  children's 
training-ground  for  the  outside,  inconsiderate 
world  that  awaits  them.  They  are  there  to 
have  their  minds  trained,  as  it  cannot  be  done 
under  the  looser  instigation  of  home  sym- 
pathy and  natural  inclination.     They  must 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  17 

enjoy  their  school,  but  not  with  a  restless, 
excited  pleasure.  Their  enjoyment  must  be 
of  that  all-pervasive,  deep,  strong,  permanent 
sort,  which  is  lifting  and  enlarging. 

Though  family  life  is  the  normal  life  for 
every  child,  and  departure  from  it  is  to  be 
made  only  for  specific  insuperable  reasons, 
yet  the  need  of  a  good  school  is  well-nigh 
imperative.  Very  few  parents  are  capable  of 
supplying  the  steady,  progressive  drill  which 
is  necessary  for  good  mental  training.  Very 
few  children  can  study  at  all  well  without 
the  stimulus  of  numbers  and  necessity.  Of 
course,  all  studies  were  first  the  natural  in- 
terests of  active  minds.  Then  they  were  ar- 
ranged by  their  lovers  in  such  shape  that 
even  persons  who  are  not  interested  can  ac- 
quire a  working  knowledge  of  them.  And 
school  was,  originally,  a  device  to  expedite 
and  make  sure  the  acquisition  of  all  such 
desirable  knowledge.  Its  larger  educative 
use  is  a  late  discovery.  Not  before  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century  did  most  schools 
begin  to  see  their  great  possibilities  in  this 
direction.    Up  to  that  time,    mental  training 


18      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

had  been  only  a  by-product  of  schooling, 
though  it  was  even  then  recognized  as  the 
school's  most  important  result.  Since  then 
the  power  of  well-directed  training  to  develop 
the  average  mind  has  been  well  established. 
Even  for  a  genius,  a  good  school  nowadays 
is  not  merely  an  opportunity;  it  is  a  regulator. 
For  the  average  mind  it  is  a  stimulus.  For 
the  slow  mind  it  is  a  necessity.  But  it  should 
be  a  good  school:  it  must  be  simple,  serene, 
and  thorough ;  and  it  must  not  fritter  away  its 
function  by  trying  to  be  the  only  educational 
factor  in  life. 

Since  the  epoch-making  Centennial  Ex- 
hibition at  Philadelphia,  in  1876,  pedagogues 
have  been  so  magnifying  their  office  as  to 
bring  us  to  a  general  impression  that  edu- 
cation and  schooling  are  synonymous.  As 
soon  as  we  discover  something  to  be  educa- 
tive which  is  not  in  the  school  curriculum, 
we  promptly  ask  to  have  it  included  there. 
Whereas,  since  schooling  is  merely  the  formal 
part  of  education,  we  should  rather  ask  of 
each  school-subject  why  it  is  already  there, 
whether  it  does  not  duplicate  the  training  of 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  19 

some  other  subject,  whether  it  cannot  be 
better  handled  at  home,  whether  it  might 
not  just  as  well  be  left  to  be  "picked  up," 
or  why  home  is  unable  or  unwilling  to  teach 
it.  This  setting  apart  of  so  many  interests 
and  making  them  school  studies,  is  giving  an 
acquired  air  to  all  our  knowledge.  Instead 
of  coming,  we  know  not  just  how,  and  grow- 
ing into  our  culture,  knowledge  is  put  on 
consciously  at  school.  This  makes  us  think 
of  it  apart  from  our  personal  selves.  Our 
culture  smacks  of  the  factory.  It  sits  ill  on 
us,  like  contract-made  clothes.  We  apolo- 
gize for  knowing  things,  and  seem  when  we 
mention  a  printed  fact  to  be  reciting  a  lesson. 
The  newspaper  and  the  magazine  are  the 
only  literature  that  we  quote  without  self- 
consciousness.  And  now,  even  the  news- 
paper and  the  magazine  are  being  "taught" 
in  school. 

This  elaborate  systematic  teaching,  step  by 
step,  of  all  skill  and  every  separate  procedure, 
gives  us  likewise  an  impression  that  no  one 
can  do  what  he  has  not  been  taught.  We 
are  not  sufficiently  self-dependent.  We  fancy 


20       HOME,   SCHOOL  AND  VACATION 

that  there  is  something  complicated  and  re- 
condite about  cooking  a  dinner  or  harnessing 
a  horse.  We  suppose  it  to  be  necessary  to  go 
through  a  course  before  we  can  understand 
anything.  This  impression  we  get  from  the 
self-important  solemnity  of  school  systems 
and  butlers. 

As  a  consequence,  too,  of  this  over-growth 
in  self-importance,  the  school  is  eager  to  as- 
sume the  whole  control  of  education  and  to 
leave  the  parent  nothing  to  do  for  the  child. 
At  best  the  typical  modern  school  asks  the 
parent  [to  cooperate.  Yet  parents  who  have 
the  desire  but  not  the  opportunity  to  discover 
and  practice  for  themselves  what  is  sound 
and  large  in  education,  should  properly  find 
the  school  willingly  at  their  service.  In  a 
truly  wholesome  order,  the  home  would 
create  and  use  the  school. 

Perhaps  the  present  reversed  state  of  things 
really  springs  from  indifference  and  igno- 
rance in  the  parents.  In  that  case  it  is  time 
that  the  schools  ceased  to  encourage  such 
indifference,  and  time  the  parents  overcame 
their  ignorance.    The  task  of  actually  doing 


PARENT  AND  EXPERT  21 

away  with  the  indifference  will  be  hard  of 
accomplishment;  but  to  cure  the  ignorance  is 
scarcely  a  difficult  matter.  A  sensible  opinion 
about  schooling  is  not  beyond  the  reach  of 
ordinarily  intelligent,  interested  persons,  even 
though  they  know  nothing  of  practical  teach- 
ing. It  is  possible  to  possess  a  complete  edu- 
cational scheme,  simple  and  flexible  enough 
to  give  room  for  individual  varieties  of  taste 
and  emphasis,  yet  firmly  based  upon  good 
sense  and  permanent  necessities. 

Such  a  scheme  follows  the  natural  order 
of  a  child's  development,  and  loses  for  him 
as  few  as  possible  of  the  speeding  weeks  while 
he  is  in  tutelage.  With  such  a  plan,  careful 
parents  can  take  an  intelligent  stand  against 
an  opinionated  school-teacher,  refusing  to 
have  their  natural  privileges  stolen  and  the 
avenues  to  their  children's  companionship 
taken  out  of  their  possession,  and  protesting 
against  allowing  the  whole  of  learning  to  be 
made  conscious. 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING 

A  mother  thinks  of  her  child's  life,  while  it 
is  under  her  charge,  as  divided  into  rapidly 
merging  strata  like  the  rainbow,  each  band 
of  years  well  defined  at  its  centre  and  shad- 
ing off  at  beginning  and  end  into  an  adjoin- 
ing band.  First  there  is  infancy,  stretching 
from  birth  to  the  time  when  the  child  can 
no  longer  be  carried  about.  Then  babyhood, 
from  the  first  self-confidence  until  he  can  be 
trusted  alone  on  errands  and  visits.  Next, 
childhood,  from  the  time  when  he  loses  his 
baby  roundness  until  he  begins  in  earnest 
really  to  assert  his  personal  independence. 
Then  boyhood, from  the  beginning  of  his  teens 
till  his  beard  starts  to  grow.  And  then,  at  last, 
the  few  precious  years  of  immaturity  before 
she  is  to  yield  him  full  charge  of  his  own  life. 
She  thinks  of  school  as  merely  one  inci- 
dent of  this  manifold  rainbow  interest.  To 
her,  school  is  a  convenience  which  makes  its 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         23 

appearance  just  when  the  child's  mind  begins 
to  need  more  constant  attention,  perhaps,  than 
the  people  at  home  have  time  or  inclination 
to  give  it.  She  has  recourse  to  the  school 
simply  that  the  more  formal  parts  of  his  edu- 
cation may  be  accomplished  thoroughly  and 
systematically.  Or  she  sends  him  to  school 
because  she  does  not  know  what  else  to  do 
with  him. 

If  the  school,  in  like  fashion,  regarded  all 
of  the  child's  life  as  within  its  own  province, 
it  would  put  him  systematically  into  classes, 
and  would  know  exactly  what  he  was  to  ac- 
complish in  each  year.  Instead  of  being  in- 
definitely divided  into  stages,  his  life  would 
be  succinctly  tabulated  somewhat  in  the  fol- 
lowing manner:  — 

SCHOOL  PERIOD  DURATION  AGE  AND  CLASS 

Nursery  Infancy  3  years  0,  1,  2 

Kindergarten  Babyhood  4  years  3,  4,  5,  6, 

Primary  Preadolescence  7  years  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13 

Secondary  Adolescence  4  years  14,  15,  16,  17 

College  Immaturity  4  years  18,  19,  20,  21 

A  mother's  natural  way  of  viewing  the  mat- 
ter is  too  vague  to  be  useful  to  her;  the  other 
way  is  too   impersonal.    But   some  orderly 


U      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

way  of  dividing  and  tabulating  may  to  great 
advantage  be  adopted  by  the  mother  in  con- 
sidering what  is  owing  to  a  child  year  by 
year,  and  what  at  each  stage  he  should  have 
accomplished;  it  is  even  well  to  think  of 
schooling  itself  as  beginning  with  the  baby's 
first  breaths.  To  do  its  best  work  for  a  child, 
schooling  must  be  planned  as  part  of  the  gen- 
eral scheme  of  his  education;  though  educa- 
tion must  not,  conversely,  be  regarded  as  all 
a  strict  schooling.  And  everywhere,  in  all 
stages,  at  home  and  at  school,  education  must 
be  dominated  by  simplicity,  thoroughness,  and 
serenity. 

The  teachers  of  infancy  are  the  mother 
and  the  nurse,  aided  in  the  case  of  lucky  in- 
fants by  the  father  and  the  other  children.  It 
is  a  time  of  no  definite  tasks,  when  the  new 
mind  is  learning  what  it  can  without  con- 
scious effort,  and  when  it  must  be  given  fit 
experiences  to  learn  from. 

With  babyhood,  duties  begin  and  gradu- 
ally multiply,  and  the  rudiments  of  all  ac- 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         25 

complishments  are  learned.  Perhaps  a  pleas- 
ant friend  is  added  to  the  natural  teachers, 
who  appears  in  some  homelike  room  for  a 
part  of  every  morning,  and  has  school  with 
the  children  and  with  some  of  their  familiar 
friends.  While  they  are  little  and  simple, 
they  can  learn  the  little  and  simple  parts  of 
everything,  so  that  when  they  are  larger  and 
more  complicated,  they  need  not  be  belittled 
and  bored  by  little  simple  things,  but  may 
be  ready  equipped  for  getting  larger,  more 
complicated  knowledge.  And,  likewise,  before 
they  grow  conscious  of  themselves  as  com- 
pared to  others,  before  they  learn  to  be  dis- 
couraged by  the  glaring  discrepancy  between 
their  performance  and  their  model,  they 
should  be  allowed  to  try  their  hands  at  many 
things.  Thus  they  gain  a  manipulation  of 
material,  and  a  familiarity  with  its  feel  and 
character.  A  little  child  has  no  standards  of 
perfection,  and  needs  none.  Unoppressed  by 
the  distant  ideal,  he  may  begin  the  piano, 
writing,  drawing,  painting,  cooking,  sewing, 
French,  German,  geography,  botany,  dancing, 
—  everything;  and  incidentally  he  will  be  gain- 


26      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

ing  an  unconscious,  rudimentary  sense  of  the 
unity  of  knowledge. 

It  is  best  not  to  launch  such  small  children 
in  a  large  school  if  one  can  help  it,  nor  even, 
at  the  very  first,  in  any  school  at  all.  All 
the  beginning  can  best  be  done  at  home,  in  the 
simple,  familiar  surroundings,  as  part  of  the 
unpremeditated  inevitable  course  of  natural 
life.  Probably  the  ideal  way  for  children  of 
five  or  six  is  to  be  taught  in  little  groups 
of  from  four  to  a  dozen.  To  these  little,  pri- 
vate, personal,  uncomprehending  creatures, 
the  world  should  seem  little  and  private,  very 
personal  and  matter-of-course. 

When  childhood  sets  in,  there  come  natural 
exactions,  —  the  need  of  sterner  compulsion 
than  home  can  offer,  the  capacity  for  more 
difficult  companionship  than  that  of  intimate 
friends,  and  the  mental  demand  for  a  larger 
size  to  the  known  world.  Yet  their  under- 
standings are  still  extremely  simple.  They 
ought  still  to  live  in  a  world  unperplexed  by 
complex  considerations.  In  every  possible  way 
children  under  thirteen  should  live  so  that 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         27 

the  few  simple  truths  of  morals,  conduct,  and 
right  thinking  are  brought  undisguised  to 
their  understanding,  over  and  over.  So  in 
the  primary  school,  things  are  to  be  merely 
less  familiar  than  at  home,  more  formal. 
There  are  other  children  about,  who  are  not 
intimates,  and  the  teacher  is  not  simply  a 
family  friend. 

Here  begin  definite  study  and  entirely  in- 
dependent work.  For  it  is  a  poor  practice  to 
supply  children  with  many  teachers  and  to 
keep  them  at  work  almost  all  their  school 
time  being  taught.  Half  the  time  they  should 
be  working  by  themselves,  free  from  the  pres- 
sure of  a  superior  intelligence.  Fortunately, 
the  subjects  actually  to  be  taught  in  these 
lower  schools  are  such  that  intelligence,  ex- 
perience, natural  fitness,  and  general  culture 
are  all  they  demand  from  a  teacher;  conse- 
sequently  the  teachers  for  each  child  can  be 
few,  and  the  total  number  of  pupils  should 
be  so  likewise.  It  is  certainly  not  the  best 
possible  arrangement  for  primary  school  chil- 
dren to  be  in  a  really  large  school. 

In  appointment,  let  the  primary  school  aim 


28      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

at  simplicity,  and  disregard  the  many  elabo- 
rations which  are  counseled  by  the  strong 
American  desire  for  entirely  irrelevant  per- 
fections. The  perfection  at  -which  to  aim  for 
childhood  is  the  perfection  of  simplicity,  — 
simplicity  in  curriculum  and  appointments, 
and  simplicity  in  effect.  Many  schools  miss 
this  simplicity  of  effect  in  the  complexity 
of  their  effort  and  the  elaborateness  of  their 
"plant."  They  give  their  inexperienced  pupils 
the  impression  that  there  is  no  end  to  the 
necessary  things,  and  that  there  is  no  differ- 
ence of  importance  between  good  ventila- 
tion and  polychromatic  photographs.  They 
provide  an  especial  appliance  for  each  sepa- 
rate thing  that  is  to  be  done,  instead  of  using 
the  smallest  possible  number  of  implements 
and  methods,  in  order  to  draw  attention  to 
essentials.  This  mistake  is  characteristic  of 
our  age.  We  are  sadly  without  a  sense  of 
proportion;  we  make  no  sturdy  insistence  on 
relative  values.  And  so  we  are  easily  and 
pathetically  misled  by  the  eager  thoroughness 
of  specialists,  forgetting  that  perennially  the 
"official  doth  magnify  his  office."    For  in- 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         29 

stance,  technical  training  of  any  sort  is  not 
really  necessary  to  a  sound  liberal  education; 
it  is  often  a  hindrance  to  it.  The  liberally 
educated  mind  can  quickly  acquire,  at  need, 
any  desired  technicalities.  So  the  specialists 
are  mistaken  in  supposing  that  subjects 
which  involve  elaborate  outlay  and  para- 
phernalia are  necessary  to  real  education,  or 
that  such  of  them  as  are  wished  for  younger 
children  cannot  be  learned  at  home  without 
the  encumbrance  of  elaborate  graded  methods. 
If  we  try  to  make  a  child  a  perfect  manu- 
factured article,  through  perfect  grading  and 
perpetual  instruction,  we  shall  do  it  at  the 
expense  of  his  imagination,  his  spontaneity, 
and  his  personal  initiative.  The  school  which 
is  to  supplement  a  good  home  should  teach 
only  those  things  which  need  competition 
and  numbers  to  be  learned  successfully,  and 
those  things  which  can  be  taught  only  by  an 
expert  who  is  too  expensive  for  individual 
use. 

As  to  methods  of  teaching,  pedagogy  and 
psychology  are  helpless  to  prescribe  for  the 
infinite  variety  of  human  type  and  human 

STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

ItOS  AftCEhES,  CAIt. 


30      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

opportunity.    One  teacher  teaches  best  in  one 
way,  another  in  another.   One  child  needs  slow 
approach;  another  apprehends  quickly.  Logi- 
cal systems  are  subtle  snares  of  the  tempter, 
and   formal   teaching   itself   is  often    out  of 
place.    Hints  are  often  sufficient.    Most  of 
the  things  we  know  we  have  heard  but  once. 
Many  things  sink  in  without  drill,  and  the 
mind    "worketh    while    sleeping."     Not    all 
knowledge    can    be    produced    in    recitation 
and  made  visible  or  audible,  neither  is  all 
skill  to  be  learned  by  practice.    Much  of  the 
best  skill  is  gained  by  passive  watching.   Per- 
fection comes  but  slowly,  and  to  look  for  even 
final  completeness  is,   of  course,  ridiculous. 
Saliency  is  the  important  matter.    Therefore 
teaching  is  to  be  judged,  not  by  method,  but 
by  the  condition  of  mind  that  it  produces  in 
the  pupil.  If  it  produces  wholesome  eagerness, 
independence,  accuracy,  and  intellectual  mod- 
esty, it  is  good  teaching.   If  it  produces  apathy 
or    nervousness,    mental    attitudinizing    and 
affectation,  thoughtless  repetition,  servility  of 
any  sort,  carelessness  or  bumptiousness,  it  is 
bad  teaching. 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         31 

In  regard  to  subjects,  the  primary  school 
will  give  most  of  its  time  to  the  obvious  things. 
Good  primary  education  supplies  in  every 
department  of  external  life  the  mere  ele- 
mentary and  innocent,  wholesome  facts  and 
methods.  It  touches  on  many  subjects,  but 
in  none  should  it  go  below  the  surface,  or  let 
the  children's  minds  feel  puzzled  or  harassed. 
Throughout  childhood  the  principal  mental 
capacity  is  for  reproduction,  for  memorizing, 
and  other  kinds  of  imitation.  Children  love 
disconnected  facts,  and  do  not  apprehend  the 
significance  of  more  than  the  simplest  rela- 
tions of  cause  and  effect.  Their  intellects, 
being  the  latest  of  human  acquisitions,  de- 
velop later.  So  childhood  is  the  time  for 
storing  up  facts  of  all  sorts,  for  gathering  the 
material  of  future  thought,  and  for  training 
memory  and  attention.  Consequently  most 
of  the  tasks  in  a  primary  school  can  and 
should  be  such  that  perfection  is  imaginable 
by  almost  every  scholar.  The  amount  of  ex- 
act knowledge  necessary  is  very  slight;  the 
exactness  and  the  training  are  all-important. 
Very  few  subjects  should  be  studied,  and  of 


32      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

those  subjects  only  the  simplest  portions.  The 
school  demands  should  be  simple,  unpreten- 
tious, unstruggling,  and  healthy,  so  that  home 
joys  and  home  purposes  will  not  be  swamped 
by  a  pervasive,  insistent  flow  of  school  interests 
and  school  duties;  and  so  that  the  children's 
minds  will  remain  free  and  buoyant. 

The  interest  in  school  work  should  be 
steady  and  quiet.  This  is  the  normal,  health- 
ful way  to  work,  without  using  excited  energy. 
It  is  as  near  as  possible  to  the  sort  of  interest 
that  children  have  when  they  are  playing  by 
themselves.  Perhaps  children  whose  percep- 
tions are  dull,  need  to  be  roused  by  stimulating 
methods.  But  children  of  intelligent  parents 
are  apt  to  be  keenly  alive  in  all  their  five  senses. 
The  mere  using  of  their  powers  is  a  pleasure. 
The  subject  and  an  opportunity  to  accomplish 
something  are  stimulus  enough  for  them.  For 
this  sort  of  child,  the  added  excitement  of  a 
teacher's  superimposed  personality  and  simu- 
lated suspense  is  nervously  injurious.  For  him 
there  is  no  need  of  trying  hard  to  make  school 
pleasant.  There  is  much  more  need  of  mak- 
ing it  serious,  and  giving  him  a  habit  of  hard, 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         33 

steady  work.  For  him  life  is  already  suf- 
ficiently pleasant;  and  he  does  not  need  to 
be  taught  most  things  laboriously.  Interests 
crowd  upon  him. 

Moreover,  a  habit  of  having  always  some 
outside  stimulus  to  urge  it  on  to  work,  is  bad 
for  the  mind's  self-dependence.  A  teacher 
should  teach  a  child  how  to  learn,  not  teach 
him  his  lessons.  The  child  should  learn  his 
own  lessons,  and  the  lessons  should  be  within 
his  capacity  for  that  kind  of  learning.  So  work 
in  a  primary  school  should  be  done  in  a  steady, 
thorough,  interested  kind  of  way,  quiet  and 
pleasant,  and  coming  as  a  matter  of  course, 
like  eating  breakfast  and  going  to  bed.  There 
should  be  reports  to  the  home,  but  no  rank- 
ing marks  for  the  children's  delectation,  ex- 
hilaration, depression,  and  jealousy;  no  prizes, 
no  sharp  comparisons  of  any  sort  of  child 
with  child.  Comparisons  belong  to  later  life, 
when  the  basis  of  just  comparison  can  be 
understood  and  the  power  of  comparison 
is  developed.  Children  should  not  be  made 
conscious  and  critical  of  themselves  or  of 
their  neighbors.    They  should  work  together 


34      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

in  a  spirit  of  mutual  good-will.  Competition, 
emulation,  a  wish  to  be  foremost,  are  natural 
and  necessary;  but  they  are  not  first-rate  mo- 
tives. In  school,  by  virtue  of  the  presence  of 
others,  they  will  always  be  healthily  at  work. 
They  need  not  be  fostered,  and  the  only 
motives  that  a  teacher  of  children  should 
appeal  to  openly  are  the  ones  she  most  re- 
spects,—  the  desire  to  do  things  as  well  as 
you  possibly  can,  and  the  desire  to  gain  what 
you  have  seen  to  be  good.  Above  all  things, 
work  must  be  earnest,  sober,  and  important. 

At  the  outset  of  youth,  life  suddenly  crowds 
and  lengthens.  This  experience  is  universal. 
Looking  back  from  maturity  at  our  youthful 
selves,  we  seem  to  see  long  spaces  between 
the  happy  child  of  twelve  and  the  searching 
young  creature  of  fifteen.  There  is  not  more 
difference  between  the  babe  of  six  months 
and  the  child  of  three  years.  Therefore,  here 
may  well  come  a  break  in  all  school  sur- 
roundings, and  a  year  of  easy  work  with 
plenty  of  out-door  exercise;  a  change  in  the 
spirit  and  method  of  the  teaching,  and  even  to 


THE  NATURE  OF  SCHOOLING         35 

some  extent  in  the  personnel  of  companions. 
It  is  now  that  life  becomes  complicated,  led 
by  ideals  impossible  of  fulfillment,  redolent  of 
questions  and  arguments,  suggestive  of  com- 
parisons, difficult.  School  should  change  in 
like  manner.  A  variety  of  teachers,  a  large 
company,  a  voluminous  aspect  in  the  studies, 
an  aim  beyond  perfection,  these  should  re- 
place the  clarity  and  self-completeness  of  the 
earlier  school. 

In  appointments  and  subjects,  the  second- 
ary school  is  necessarily  and  desirably  com- 
plex. The  youthful  mind  is  full  of  new  powers 
and  new  kinds  of  interests.  It  needs  to  be 
fed  from  a  full  manger.  As  to  methods  of 
teaching,  stimuli  of  various  sorts  are  suitable 
enough  and  competition  to  a  mild  degree  is 
not  out  of  place.  But  the  desire  to  do  things 
as  well  as  you  can,  must  grow  even  stronger 
as  the  standard  of  performance  rises.  And 
the  desire  to  gain  what  you  have  seen  to  be 
good  must  grow  wiser,  more  independent, 
and  more  unselfish.  To  them  must  be  added 
love  of  abstract  truth,  love  of  knowledge  for 
its  own  sake,  understanding  of  the  relations 


36      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

of  things  and  of  the  reasons  for  things,  a  joy 
in  hard  work.  The  youth  must  learn  to  know 
himself.  He  must  accept  and  use  his  natural 
place  among  his  fellows;  not  pluming  him- 
self upon  his  talents  nor  blinding  himself  to 
his  weak  points,  nor  being  out  of  patience 
with  his  stupidities,  but  looking  upon  his 
powers  as  tools  to  be  put  to  the  best  use  he 
can  find  for  them.  All  this  can  be  fostered  at 
school,  but  the  home  expectation  is  what  aids 
him  most. 

Youth  needs  college,  or  if  not  college,  then 
something  equally  worth  while,  equally  com- 
plex and  equally  enlarging,  something  which 
will  establish  independence  and  enrich  the 
mind  by  daily  contact  with  the  process  of 
careful  thinking.  Colleges  are  foolish,  it  is 
true.  But  so  is  society,  and  so  is  business. 
Each  is  an  inadequate  device  for  the  educa- 
tional purpose.  But  college  has  the  deeper 
purpose,  and  is  a  more  thoughtful  and  care- 
fully contrived  device. 

Whatever  a  boy  or  girl  does  from  eighteen 
years  old  to  twenty-two,  should  be  considered 
and  managed  as  still  a  part  of  life's  prepara- 


THE  NATURE   OF  SCHOOLING         37 

tion.  We  human  creatures  have  the  privilege 
of  prolonged  infancy,  and  those  of  us  who  are 
not  in  the  clutch  of  financial  necessity  may 
seize  the  full  advantage  of  that  probation  for 
their  children.  This  is  something  that  they 
owe  to  themselves  and  to  humanity.  Unless 
those  who  are  able,  develop  their  children 
to  the  greatest  advance  they  can  reach,  the 
whole  race  is  retarded  in  its  upward  climb. 
Nothing  has  so  hindered  it  in  the  past  as  the 
self-satisfied  lagging  of  the  vanguard  group. 

We  are  too  apt  to  rest  content  if  our  chil- 
dren are  as  well  developed  as  ourselves,  and 
often  we  do  not  make  the  personal  exertion 
necessary  to  secure  even  that.  Of  course, 
if  we  are  satisfactory  to  ourselves  and  com- 
pletely useful  to  other  people,  we  may  save 
ourselves  the  bother  of  puzzling  over  educa- 
tion :  we  need  only  reproduce  for  our  children 
what  we  went  through  ourselves.  If  most  of 
our  friends  are  well-rounded  and  thoroughly 
valuable  persons,  so  that  we  know  that  they 
have  reached  the  fruitful  use  of  every  power 
they  have,  then  we  may  feel  satisfied  that 


38      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

the  educated  classes  are  doing  their  full  duty 
toward  their  own  individuals  and  toward  their 
numberless  fellows  scrambling  up  behind 
them.  But  we  know  very  well,  each  searching 
his  own  self  and  his  acquaintance,  that  barely 
a  person  can  be  found  who  is  able  to  do  full 
justice  to  himself.  Every  one  might  be  more 
satisfactory  than  he  is,  might  easily  be  so. 
There  is  no  one  who  would  not  have  been  bet- 
ter and  happier  for  some  wiser  treatment  in  one 
respect  or  another  while  he  was  in  tutelage. 

It  the  more  concerns  us  to  use  all  possible 
devices  for  preventing  omissions  in  our  chil- 
dren's education,  and  to  see  to  it  that  their 
schooling  at  every  stage  supplements  a  wise 
home  training  and  a  rich  home  opportunity. 
The  home  training  must  be  controlled  by 
justice,  sympathy,  and  a,  high  standard  of 
performance,  debarring  rigidity,  indulgence, 
and  good-enough-will-do.  The  home  oppor- 
tunity must  give  ample  room  for  personal 
tastes,  spontaneous  activity,  genuine  enthu- 
siasms, and  unhampered  experiments.  Not 
a  month  must  be  unheeded.  The  child  will 
never  come  to  that  age  again. 


A  GENERAL  SCHEME  OF 
EDUCATION 

JLo-day,  if  an  average  man  is  to  feel  thor- 
oughly at  home  in  his  environment  and  com- 
prehend the  world  in  which  his  work  must 
be  done,  he  needs  the  greatest  possible  va- 
riety of  conversance  with  human  knowledge 
and  skill,  and  his  own  powers  must  be  well 
at  his  own  command.  The  whole  period  of 
tutelage  is  not  too  long  to  equip  him  satis- 
factorily. Therefore  the  ingenuity  of  home 
and  school  must  be  combined  to  use  all  of  his 
first  twenty-one  years  economically  and  fruit- 
fully for  him,  so  that  he  will  be  equal  to  the 
situation  when  he  arrives. 

Such  being  the  state  of  things,  a  compre- 
hensive outline  of  elementary  learning  is 
valuable  at  home  and  at  school.  At  home  it 
guards  against  omissions  and  time-wasting. 
At  school  it  helps  keep  the  effort  modest  and 
thorough.    Its  suggestions  should  include  not 


40      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

only  the  usual  stock  studies,  but  also  all  those 
less  academic  things  which  are  best  fitted  not 
to  be  taught  in  school  but  to  be  absorbed 
as  home  interests.  Such  a  catalogue  has  un- 
avoidably the  ridiculous  look  of  a  complete 
guide  to  omniscience,  covering  "All  Educa- 
tion from  Cradle  to  College."  But  con- 
sidered soberly  it  is  merely  a  sketch,  not  a 
rigid  arrangement;  it  is  a  useful  outline  of 
all  sorts  of  things  that  are  desirable  to  teach 
and  to  learn.  The  one  given  at  the  end  of 
this  book  aims  to  arrange  the  subjects  in  a 
sensible  order,  so  that  they  can  be  comfortably 
and  healthfully  assimilated,  taking  into  ac- 
count the  usual  abilities  and  limitations  of 
each  age,  and  emphasizing  always  what  is 
salient.  Each  subject  is  inserted  at  the  point 
where  a  healthy  average  child  may  well  be 
introduced  to  it.  If  he  shows  no  capacity  to 
comprehend  it  then,  it  may  be  postponed,  but 
not  omitted.  If  he  shows  a  capacity  very  much 
earlier,  well  and  good;  let  him  begin  earlier, 
—  if  he  is  thoroughly  healthy.  For  various 
reasons  of  convenience,  also,  the  order  may 
perfectly  well  be  altered.    The  only  purpose 


A  GENERAL  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION  41 

of  the  list  is  to  mention  everything,  at  a  sea- 
sonable moment,  and  to  allow  time  enough  for 
an  adequate  acquaintance  with  each.  It  does 
not  intend,  either,  to  put  a  terminal  limit  to 
acquaintance  with  any  subject;  once  taken 
up,  nothing  is  wholly  dropped.  A  subject  still 
continues  as  an  interest  after  it  has  ceased 
to  be  a  study.  In  this  list  school  work  goes 
side  by  side  with  home  work,  and  vacation 
time  is  given  plenty  of  occupation.  Any 
parent  who  consults  the  plan  will  find  a  sug- 
gestion, not  a  direction,  about  what  to  do 
with  a  child's  mind  at  any  age,  and  about 
how  to  reduce  to  a  proper  minimum  the 
formal  teaching  in  a  sound  education. 

It  is  important  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 
no  one  plan  of  education  can  suit  equally  any 
two  children.  Differences  in  talents,  taste, 
and  temperament,  and  accidents  in  outside 
opportunity,  often  make  the  needs  different 
even  for  brothers  close  in  age.  Illness,  lack 
of  proper  exercise,  too  rich  food,  second 
teeth,  over-stimulation,  over-study,  or  insuffi- 
cient work,  added  to  natural  peculiarities  of 
make-up  which  are  part  of  a  child's  charac- 


42      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

ter,  all  help  to  vary  development  and  to  make 
each  child  a  separate  problem.  A  mother 
must  be  plastic,  constantly  ready  to  change 
special  plans  according  to  circumstances. 
Talents  must  be  fostered,  —  even  small  fleet- 
ing or  superficial  talents,  —  for  it  is  through 
the  unfolding  of  talents  that  each  human 
creature  gains  self-confidence  and  strong 
enthusiasm.  Tastes  must  be  gratified,  en- 
larged, and  supplemented,  for  it  is  through 
our  tastes  that  grace  and  charm  come  into 
life.  Temperament  must  be  used,  modified, 
and  reinforced,  for  temperament  is  the  con- 
trolling factor  in  every  life,  the  unchangeable 
centre  round  which  character  is  built.  The 
watchful  mother's  safeguard  against  foolish 
variety  is  in  having  a  firmly  fixed  compre- 
hension of  the  final  purpose,  —  self-use  and 
balanced  powers,  ruled  by  wholesome  desires. 
This  catalogue  takes  for  granted  that  a 
child's  brain  is  as  much  a  part  of  his  body 
as  is  any  other  organ,  and  that  his  natural 
exercise  of  it  can  no  more  be  surely  trusted 
to  give  it  good  development  than  his  other 
natural  exercises  can  be  trusted,  undirected, 


A   GENERAL  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION   43 

with  the  proper  strengthening  of  the  rest  of  his 
body.  Likewise,  to  leave  even  a  little  child's 
mind  without  food  or  furnishings  is  to  leave 
it  without  strength  or  comfort;  and  then  his 
mind  grows  without  shape  and  with  no  habits, 
only  desultory  inclinations.  Consequently  his 
formal  acquisition  of  useful  knowledge  should 
generally  begin  before  he  is  six  years  old.  Sev- 
eral years  of  time  can  thus  be  saved  at  the 
beginning  of  life  which  have  generally,  these 
last  thirty  years,  been  allowed  to  go  to  semi- 
waste.  It  is  possible  to  fill  young  minds  so 
full  of  material  and  interest  and  simple  skill 
that  after  life  will  not  be  puzzling,  and  in 
whatever  estate  they  later  find  service  they 
will  be  adequate  and  free. 

By  the  same  principle  the  catalogue  takes 
for  granted  that  mental  inactivity  during 
fourteen  long  summer  vacations  is  not  salu- 
tary. Fourteen  long  summer  vacations  are 
the  equivalent  of  almost  five  years.  The 
scheme  does  not  propose  the  apportioning  of 
every  hour  in  every  vacation  day  to  some 
allotted  task.  It  merely  urges  the  duty  of 
experience  toward  inexperience,  and  warns 


44      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

us  not  to  let  the  child's  mental  energies  be 
softened  by  mere  repetition  of  familiar  occu- 
pations and  effortless  acts,  or  even  by  the 
novel  or  vigorous  pleasures  of  any  merely 
physical  and  emotional  experiences.  That  is 
sending  the  child  to  a  school  of  mental  va- 
grancy, and  is  as  unjust  as  is  driving  him 
to  restlessness  by  over-stimulation.  It  is  true 
that  time  for  germination  and  fructification 
is  needed;  time  for  the  growing,  eager  mind 
to  invent  for  itself  joys  and  pastimes,  prob- 
lems and  purposes  of  its  own,  —  plenty  of 
time,  in  summer  and  winter.  But  there  must 
not  be  so  much  of  such  time  given  that  the 
mind  never  gains  any  new  material  with  which 
to  experiment  or  any  new  vigor  with  which  to 
think.  One  of  the  most  serious  reasons  for 
giving  children  tasks  and  urging  them  to 
difficult  undertakings  is  that  they  may  surely 
learn  what  longing  is.  The  desire  for  what 
is  high  and  far  away,  —  this  is  the  heart  of 
life.  The  desire  to  attain,  the  courage  to 
strive,  the  wisdom  to  desire  and  dare  well,  — 
these  are  what  we  want  for  our  children. 
In  consequence  of  failure  to  recognize  the 


A  GENERAL  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION   45 

principle  that  every  mind  needs  steady  regular 
exercise  adequate  to  its  powers,  the  weakest 
part  of  our  educational  methods  to-day  is  in 
the  first  twelve  years.  Everywhere  through 
this  country,  in  both  private  and  public 
schools,  and  even  more  flagrantly  at  home, 
so  much  time  is  wasted  that  the  growth  ac- 
complished in  these  years  is  cut  down  to  less 
than  half  of  what  it  should  be,  and  the  sec- 
ondary school  above  becomes  a  place  of  close 
pressed  haste  to  make  up  for  such  wholesale 
losses.  To  go  into  the  entire  matter  and  pre- 
sent a  reasoned  proof  of  this  condition  and 
its  causes,  and  then  to  give  an  elaborate 
exposition  of  a  sounder  policy  and  a  better 
method,  would  pass  the  scope  of  a  thousand 
pages.  Any  one  who  is  interested  need  only 
consult  all  the  best  teachers  of  his  acquaint- 
ance, —  not  the  psychologists,  pedagogists, 
superintendents,  and  merely  directing  prin- 
cipals, but  the  teachers  who  are  trying  to  do 
the  actual  teaching.  Suffice  it  to  offer  here 
the  following  convictions  and  a  clear  scheme 
based  thereon. 


46      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

UNDERLYING   CONVICTIONS 

Systems  of  education  which  are  logically 
reasoned  out  from  a  few  fixed  premises 
necessarily  omit  a  multitude  of  important 
matters,  and  over-emphasize  details  of  per- 
fection, for  it  is  the  nature  of  logic  to  be 
exclusive  of  all  facts  outside  the  assumed  pre- 
mises, and  exhaustive  of  all  within.  Educa- 
tion, therefore,  cannot  be  logically  systematic. 
It  must  be  regulated  by  ordinary  common- 
sense,  balancing  one  consideration  of  experi- 
ence against  another. 

Schooling  exists  to  provide  mental  training 
by  orderly  procedure.  It  must  train  the  child 
to  steady  work,  continuous  thought,  voluntary 
application,  and  independent  decision.  No 
methods  which  omit  or  weaken  such  training 
are  good  methods. 

The  sincere  use  of  words,  whether  in  study- 
ing from  books  or  in  expressing  one's  thoughts, 
is  a  more  exacting  and  a  more  thorough 
mental  education  than  any  other  occupa- 
tion can  be,  for  it  demands  an  unlapsing 
attention  and  uses  all  functions  of  the  mind 


A  GENERAL  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION   47 

at  once,  the  later  as  well  as  the  earlier 
powers. 

Complete  knowledge  and  the  complete 
understanding  of  any  subject  are  impossible 
even  to  an  adult.  For  educational  purposes 
we  must  choose  the  salient,  established,  sim- 
ple parts  of  each  subject  and  let  the  rest  go. 

The  power  of  the  mind  is  injured  by  being 
left  for  seven  years  without  learning  volun- 
tary concentration.  And  it  is  a  grave  mistake 
to  make  no  provision  for  regular  mental  exer- 
cise during  fourteen  long  summer  vacations. 

Each  sort  of  knowledge  should  be  encoun- 
tered three  times  before  full  freedom  of  choice 
and  treatment  is  reached:  — 

in  Babyhood,  to  grow  familiar  with  the  general  nature 
of  the  material; 

in  Childhood,  to  learn  the  skeleton  and  general  ar- 
rangement of  the  subject; 

in  Youth,  to  learn  the  history  and  general  theory  of 
the  subject,  and  its  large  relations  to  life. 

After  that,  the  details  may  be  mastered  to 
any  desired  extent. 

By  meeting  halfway  the  eager,  natural 
curiosity  of  a  child  between  three  and  seven 


48      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

years  old,  much  of  the  early  drudgery  of 
school  studies  can  be  agreeably  forestalled 
and  the  nervous  crowding  of  later  school 
work  prevented. 

During  primary  and  secondary  education 
the  various  kinds  of  human  knowledge  and 
interest  must  become  familiar  to  the  con- 
sciousness in  their  healthful  aspects,  omitting 
what  is  perplexing,  morbid,  bare,  or  patho- 
logical in  any  way.  But  only  the  few  indis- 
pensable subjects  must  be  mastered  (e.  g., 
spelling),  or  even  taught  in  such  a  way  as  to 
suggest  mastery.  Some  few  others  must  be 
mastered  in  their  elements  only  (e.g.,  physics). 
Still  other  few  must  be  learned  briefly  and  in 
skeleton  (e.  g.,  history).  The  vast  majority  of 
facts  must  be  mentioned,  not  taught;  opened 
to  the  consciousness,  not  made  a  part  of  re- 
quired study.  Most  of  them  should  be  met 
at  home,  not  at  school. 

Home  and  vacation  interests  and  occupa- 
tions should  run  parallel  to  school  work,  and 
supplement  it. 

So  little  work  should  be  required  at  the 
upper  end  of  the  primary  school  that  a  child 


A  GENERAL  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION   4!) 

could  then  have  one  easy  year,  with  an  extra 
amount  of  outdoor  time. 


RESULTS 


Followed  by  parent  and  school,  these  con- 
victions may  have  the  following  results  :  — 

Before  the  approximate  age  of  seven  years, 
children  may  learn  — 

to  read  and  write  childish  English  easily,  and  to  repeat 

verses; 
to  count,  and  to  do  simple  sums  both  oral  and  written 

in  numbers  less  than  100,  and  to  tell  time; 
to  repeat  some  verses  in  French  and  German  and  to 

count  in  each  language,  also  to  name  the  days  of 

the  week  and  the  months  in  each; 
to  tell  childish  stories  of  famous  children,  etc.; 
to  understand  the  globe  and  the  map  of  the  world,  etc., 

points  of  the  compass; 
to  know  the  names  of  common  birds,  flowers,  trees, 

and  insects,  and  the  parts  of  a  flower,  etc. ; 
to  sing  by  note,  following  the  hand,  and  to  sing  the 

scale,  etc.,  to  play  little  pieces; 
to  paste,  cut,  sew  cards,  sew  cloth,  weave  paper,  etc., 

fold  and  cut  paper,  trace,   color  drawings  with 

water  color,  etc.,  and  to  dance,  march,  etc.,  and 

to  know  right  from  left; 
to  be  familiar  with   very  much   first-rate  prose   and 

verse. 


50      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

Between  the  approximate  ages  of  seven 
and  thirteen,  they  may  learn  — 

to  read  fluently  and  intelligently  any  book  whose  sub- 
ject-matter is  sufficiently  comprehensible  to  them; 

to  understand  the  simple  terms  and  relations  of  gram- 
mar; 

to  write  correctly  and  naturally  on  any  subject  that 
interests  them; 

to  spell; 

to  do  arithmetic,  oral  and  written,  through  compound 
numbers,  but  only  for  simple  problems; 

to  do  inventional  geometry,  and  algebra  through 
quadratics,  but  these  also  only  in  very  simple 
forms ; 

to  read  simple  French  with  ease  (after  seven  years' 
lessons),  and  to  speak  it  simply,  without  embar- 
rassment; 

to  do  the  same  with  German,  so  far  as  two  years  less 
study  make  that  possible; 

to  read  and  write  simple  Latin; 

to  know  the  skeleton  outlines  of  English,  American, 
Ancient,  Grecian,  and  Roman  history,  and  general 
modern  history  to  the  Renaissance; 

to  be  familiar  with  the  use  of  maps,  and  with  simple 
modern  geography  (commercial,  political,  and 
physical),  as  well  as  with  ancient; 

to  feel  at  ease  in  the  mere  elementary  facts  and  terms 
of  botany,  physiology,  zoology,  simple  physics  and 
chemistry,  physical  geography,  astronomy,  and 
geology; 


A  GENERAL  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION   51 

to  sing  songs  in  parts  (by  dint  of  a  singing  lesson  every 
school  day); 

to  model  a  little,  to  draw  in  outline  and  in  flat  color, 
and  to  design  patterns,  also  to  carve  a  trifle  per- 
haps, and  to  drive  a  nail,  etc.; 

to  do  healthful  calisthenics  with  the  precision  of  daily 
practice. 

Between  the  approximate  ages  of  thir- 
teen and  eighteen,  all  the  usual  work  may 
be  done,  except  what  has  been  anticipated, 
and  there  is  time  for  several  unusual  studies. 

These  results  are  attained  by  simplifying 
the  material  in  each  subject,  by  condensing 
the  method,  and  by  saying  many  things  only 
once.  The  home  is  a  large  factor  in  these 
results.  The  school  alone  cannot  accomplish 
them. 

DISTRIBUTION    OF   TIME 

This  work  can  actually  be  distributed  and 
accomplished  without  study  at  home  until  the 
age  of  eleven,  and  then  with  not  more  than 
an  hour  or  so  a  week  up  to  fourteen  or  fif- 
teen, leaving  plenty  of  leisure  of  mind  for 
every  one  concerned,  as  well  as  ample  time  for 


52      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

outdoor  games  and  exercise,  and   for  home 
pleasures  and  duties. 

To  accomplish  this,  children  will  need  to 
be  schooled  — 


at    4        years 

fori 

hour    daily ; 

at    5-6    years 

for  1 

hour    daily ; 

at    7        years 

for  2 

hours  daily; 

at    8        years 

for  3 

hours  dailv; 

at    9-10  years 

for  3J 

hours  daily; 

at  11-18  years 

for  4 

hours  daily. 

Of  course,  for  the  younger  children,  as 
much  more  time  in  school  could  be  arranged 
for  as  seemed  desirable  in  special  cases,  by 
providing  occupations  of  various  sorts;  but 
this  is  all  that  is  necessary. 

The  various  studies  would  fall  in,  some- 
what after  this  fashion:  — 


To  come  every  day  To  come  two  or  three  days  a  week 

for  an  indefinite  period 

reading  aloud  and  listen-  history 

ing 

reading  silently  geography 

writing  and  composition  later  science 

mathematics  later  languages 


A   GENERAL  SCHEME   OF  EDUCATION  53 


To  come  every  day  for 
three  years 

To  come  one  day  a  week  jor  an 
indefinite  period 

beginning  French 
beginning  German 
beginning  Latin 
beginning  Greek 

memorizing  literature 
speaking  or  acting  literatui 

OCCUPATIONS 

To  come  every  day  for 
eighteen  years 

To  come  two  days  a  week  for  an 
indefinite  'period 

music 

exercise 

handwork 

early  science 
art  information 

In  fact,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  extraor- 
dinary enlargement  of  the  intellectual  field 
brought  upon  us  during  the  past  fifty  years 
should  make  of  education  either  a  distressful 
scramble  or  a  bewildered  smattering.  By  sim- 
plification, calmness,  and  foresight  the  chil- 
dren can  be  given  a  modern  liberal  education 
without  strain  and  without  shallowness. 


A  FEW  SIMPLE  FACTS 

The  few  principles  here  set  down  are  chosen 
only  because  of  their  practical  usefulness. 
They  do  not  cover  the  whole  ground,  nor 
have  they  any  systematic  relation  to  one  an- 
other. They  briefly  treat  the  questions  which 
most  often  come  up  in  the  course  of  practical 
education. 

Manner  is  All  Important.  It  is  the 
manner  of  learning,  not  the  material  or  even 
the  method,  that  produces  a  sound  educa- 
tion. 

(a)  Manner,  not  Matter.  It  is  the  manner, 
not  the  material  of  learning,  that  is  essential. 
All  the  schools  of  any  one  country  teach 
substantially  the  same  subjects  simply  for 
convenience.  The  Japanese  for  thousands 
of  years  based  education  on  material  which 
seems  to  us  preposterous.  In  their  little  iso- 
lated island  there  were  not  enough  large  things 
to  work  upon,  so  they  trained  their  minds 


A  FEW  SIMPLE  FACTS  55 

upon  small  matters,  —  elaborate  punctilio  of 
ceremony,  infinite  nicety  of  detail,  countless 
steps  and  ramifications  of  procedure  in  every 
art,  always  and  everywhere  a  multiplication 
of  needless  rules.  But  when  their  minds, 
trained  by  such  exacting  education,  met  the 
material  of  Western  life,  they  grasped,  handled, 
and  managed  it  with  a  masterly  perfection 
that  amazed  the  Westerner,  accustomed  to 
more  large  and  careless  mental  motions,  and 
hitherto  impatient  of  being  precise  and  par- 
ticular. 

(6)  Manner,  not  Method.  It  is  the  manner, 
not  the  method  of  learning,  that  produces  a 
sound  education.  Entirely  well-educated  per- 
sons may  be  produced  by  any  one  of  a  hun- 
dred current  methods  and  pedagogic  theo- 
ries; but  no  well-educated  person  can  be 
produced  by  any  method  whatever,  unless  in 
the  course  of  it,  and  all  through  the  course  of 
it,  his  mental  powers  are  steadily,  adequately, 
and  equally  exercised.  We  take  thought 
over  which  method  we  shall  choose  for  our 
children's  schooling,  not  because  one  method 
educates  and  the  others  do  not,  but  because 


56      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

one  method  has  certain  valuable  attendant 
consequences  and  another  has  others.  At 
public  schools  the  children  get  democratic 
experience.  At  private  schools  they  get  de- 
sirable friends,  perhaps.  At  home  they  get 
personal  attention,  and  hear  nothing  of  which 
their  parents  wish  them  to  be  ignorant.  So, 
too,  special  methods  of  actual  teaching  are 
chosen,  usually  for  reasons  outside  pure  edu- 
cation. One  method  gives  quicker  results, 
one  gives  wider  range  of  knowledge,  one  is 
adapted  to  large  classes,  etc.  But  in  all  these 
places  and  all  these  ways  the  children  can 
get  a  sound  education  if  they  have  a  good 
teacher. 

Schooling  should  deal  primarily  with 
Mental  Powers.  Primarily,  school  is  to 
train  the  mental  powers;  culture  and  morals 
are  only  attendant  possibilities  of  mental 
education.  Of  course,  the  less  the  home 
does  for  culture  and  morals,  the  more  the 
school  is  tempted  to  do  for  them.  And 
of  course,  in  the  capacity  of  friend,  the 
teacher  is  constantly  and  necessarily  an 
important  factor  in  both  culture  and  mor- 


A  FEW  SIMPLE   FACTS  57 

als.     But   school   must  aim   first   at   mental 
training. 

The  mental  powers  are  memory,  will, 
mind,  and  intellect.1  Training  them  increases 
the  capacity  for 

accuracy  independence 

attention  initiative 

comparison  judgment 

concentration  (voluntary  observation 

and  acquired)  orderliness 

discrimination  promptness 

expression,  power  of  recording,  accuracy  in 

foresight  self-control 

imagination    (reproduc-  sense  of  proportion 

tive,  constructive,  and  seriousness  toward  work 
creative)  and  their  like. 

These  capacities  gain  strength  by  exercise 
upon  no  matter  what  material  and  by  no  mat- 
ter what  method. 

Desire  is  not  a  Mental  Power.  Mem- 
ory, will,  mind,  and  intellect  are  mental 
powers;  desire  is  not. 

Memory  is  the  storehouse  for  material.  Its  use  is  in 
record,  imitation,  and  reproductive  imagination. 

Will  is  the  force  which  causes  voluntary  action.    Its 

exercise  brings  about  attention,  concentration,  expres- 

1  Here  and  in  the  next  section  the  category  is  one  of  convenience, 
not  of  science. 


58      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

sion,  initiative,  independence,  observation,  promptness, 
and  self-control.  ' 

Mind  is  the  capacity  for  sorting,  classifying,  general- 
izing, and  reasoning  logically,  i.  e.,  deductively.  It  is 
the  power  to  see  likeness  and  difference,  the  power, 
that  is,  not  of  seeing  values,  but  of  arranging  commodi- 
ties. Its  activity  is  necessary  for  accuracy,  comparison, 
constructive  imagination,  and  orderliness. 

Intellect  is  the  ability  to  see  values,  to  reason  induc- 
tively, and  to  make  abstractions.  Its  application  re- 
sults in  creative  imagination,  discrimination,  foresight, 
judgment,  sense  of  proportion,  and  seriousness  toward 
work. 

On  the  other  hand, 

Desire  is  that  personal  preference  which  makes  a 
child  like  one  study  better  than  another.  It  depends 
upon  many  things,  his  physical  make-up,  his  inherit- 
ance of  tradition,  his  home  training,  his  health,  him- 
self. And  upon  desire  depends  his  capacity  for  affec- 
tion, moral  action,  culture,  and  good  taste. 

Thought  is  the  Use  of  the  Mind 
and  the  Intellect.  Not  all  mental  power 
is  power  to  think.  Memory  is  not  thought. 
Will  is  not  thought.  Thought  is  the  use  of 
the  mind  and  the  intellect.    Thought  is  re- 


A  FEW  SIMPLE   FACTS  59 

arranging  on  some  definite  plan  material  found 
in  the  memory. 

The  simplest  form  of  thought  is  in  exer- 
cising the  mind's  power  to  perceive  likeness 
and  difference.  From  thinking  on  this  plan 
have  arisen,  through  more  and  more  compli- 
cated sequence,  the  various  activities  of  the 
mind  in  sorting,  classifying,  generalizing,  and 
reasoning  logically. 

The  more  difficult  forms  of  thought  arise 
from  thinking  on  the  intellectual  plan;  that 
is,  from  using  the  power  to  perceive  cause 
and  effect.  Out  of  this  plan  have  come,  at 
later  and  later  stages  of  man's  development, 
reasoning  inductively,  seeing  values,  making 
abstractions,  and  testing  principles. 

Sensation  is  not  Thought.  All  the 
stock  of  materials  for  the  mind  and  intellect 
to  think  about  is  got  through  the  senses  and 
through  the  senses  only,  and  is  stored  in  the 
memory.  But  the  material  does  not  do  any 
thinking,  neither  does  the  storehouse;  and  the 
process  of  gathering  the  one  to  put  into  the 
other  is  not  thought;  it  is  observation  or  per- 
ception, the  use  of  the  senses. 


60      HOME,  SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

The  Senses  are  of  Prime  Importance 
to  Thought.  All  the  material  for  thought 
comes  through  the  senses,  so  if  the  thoughts 
are  to  be  kept  constantly  sound  and  whole- 
some, the  senses  must  constantly  supply  sound 
and  wholesome  material.  The  senses  must 
themselves  be  kept  sound,  wholesome,  and 
active,  and  they  must  be  exercised  upon  sound 
and  wholesome  actualities. 

Mental  is  not  Moral.  Mental  char- 
acteristics have  no  moral  quality;  and  one 
of  them  is  as  valuable  as  the  other.  Even 
self-control  and  foresight  are  not  moral;  a 
skilled  burglar  must  possess  them  both  in 
a  high  degree.  The  school's  primary  aim  is 
to  give  the  child  the  most  effective  possible 
use  of  his  characteristics,  whatever  they  hap- 
pen to  be.  It  intends  to  give  him  self-use. 
Whether  he  uses  himself  for  good  purposes 
is  quite  another  matter,  and  not  a  problem 
for  his  mental  training. 

Character  is  Alive.  Every  child  has 
a  multiple  personality.  To  be  sure,  certain 
characteristics  are  cogent  in  him  and  stamp 
his  character;  certain  talents  are  potent  and 


A  FEW  SIMPLE  FACTS  61 

determine  his  bent;  certain  tastes  are  active 
and  influence  his  enjoyments.  But  he  has  in 
him,  besides,  thousands  of  more  or  less  latent 
characteristics,  talents,  and  tastes,  which  can 
be  brought  into  play  by  stimulus,  accidental 
or  intentional.  Any  one  of  them,  once  brought 
into  play,  acts  with  a  modifying  and  some- 
times revolutionary  influence  upon  the  whole 
child.  Thus,  capacities  and  tendencies  are 
not  predetermined  and  rigid;  talents  and 
tastes  alter  and  grow.  Only  temperament 
remains,  and  that  itself  can  be  submerged 
by  faulty  physical  health. 

Completeness  entails  Balance.  Com- 
plete development  must  be  by  genuine  activity 
of  all  the  mental  powers.  This  cannot  be 
gained  by  a  process  of  uninterrupted  imita- 
tion, conformity,  and  obedience;  neither  can 
it  be  gained  through  unmitigated  free  choice. 
The  two  must  be  balanced. 

Schooling  aims  at  Self-Use  and  Bal- 
anced Powers.  Schooling  can  foster  self- 
use  and  balanced  powers.  It  cannot  provide 
characteristics  or  desires.  It  works  primarily 
upon  the  mental  characteristics  as  they  already 


62      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

exist  in  the  child.  Taste,  talent,  and  moral 
character  are  beyond  its  direct  province.  An 
efficient  man  can  be  produced  by  judicious 
mental  training,  but  not  a  cultivated  man, 
a  clever  man,  or  a  good  man.  The  moral 
effect  of  a  school  is  produced  indirectly  by 
the  intensity  with  which  it  insists  upon  high 
and  rigorous  standards.  The  moral  teach- 
ing of  a  good  school  is  by  practice,  not 
precept. 

Real  Teaching  is  by  Guidance,  not 
Conveyance.  Three  quarters  of  all  skill- 
ful teaching  consists  in  presenting  opportuni- 
ties for  mental  action.  A  formed  mind  has 
a  tendency  to  paralyze  an  unformed  mind. 
The  childish  mind  stands  still  when  it  is  too 
much  aware  of  an  older  presence.  Therefore 
when  children  have  been  supplied  with  what 
they  need  at  home  or  at  school,  they  must 
be  left  as  much  as  possible  to  themselves  in 
the  use  of  it.  The  less  teaching  the  better,  so 
long  as  they  learn.  The  teaching  should  be 
just  enough  to  insure  steady  progress  and 
good  mental  habits. 

Often,  once  is  enough.     Unjaded  minds, 


A  FEW  SIMPLE   FACTS  63 

alert  and  thorough  in  their  habits,  notice 
what  is  heard  or  seen  the  first  time  it  appears, 
so  that  many  things  need  no  drill  for  children 
who  are  well  educated.  The  salient  or  curi- 
ous fact  stays  by  them  because  it  is  salient 
or  curious. 

Again,  most  things  need  not  be  remem- 
bered. The  importance  of  them  for  educa- 
tion lies  in  the  child's  having  apprehended 
their  existence  and  so  used  them  to  build  up 
a  conception  and  comprehension  of  the  uni- 
verse as  it  actually  exists  and  has  existed. 

The  Subconscious  Area  is  Many  Times 
Larger  than  the  Area  of  Attention. 
A  child  notices  and  is  aware  of  only  what  he 
happens  to  be  paying  attention  to;  but  all 
the  while  whatever  enters  his  mind  through 
any  avenue  is  being  diligently  recorded  by 
his  memory,  sorted  by  his  mind,  and  judged 
by  his  intellect.  All  that  goes  on  about  him 
is  making  its  impression. 

The  Standard  of  Performance  should 
be  High.  Each  thing  should  be  done  as 
well  as  that  child  can  do  it.  A  wise  teacher 
is   satisfied  with  nothing  less.    There  is   no 

SIAIEHORMAL  SCHOOL, 

ItOS  HNGBLiES,  CH.ll. 


64      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

more  clear  mark  of  the  really  well-educated 
man  than  his  efficient  power  of  performance. 
Partially  balanced,  semi-controlled  persons 
laugh  at  the  "particularity"  of  a  high  stand- 
ard, but  when  they  want  anything  well  done, 
from  a  well-cooked  dinner  to  well-placed 
advice,  they  go  straight  to  these  same  efficient 
people. 

Self-Reliance  should  be  Habitual. 
The  child  must  do  for  himself.  When  he  is 
grown  he  will  choose  one  special  service  which 
he  can  do  best  for  others,  and  then  will  let 
others  do  most  other  things  for  him.  While 
he  is  a  child,  he  must,  for  many  reasons, 
do  everything  possible  for  himself,  —  from 
buttoning  his  coat  to  learning  his  lessons. 
All  that  a  grown  person  would  need  to  know 
in  order  to  shift  for  himself,  a  boy  or  girl 
must  learn  to  do.  This  is  not  only  true  for 
practical  and  ethical  reasons;  it  is  urgent  for 
mental  and  intellectual  reasons  also.  The 
only  limit  to  self-reliance  must  be  his  own 
temperament. 

Good  Training  leaves  Four  Marks. 
A  ready  practical  imagination,  an  alert  power 


A  FEW  SIMPLE  FACTS  65 

of  complete  attention,  a  test  for  the  real  mean- 
ing of  words,  and  a  quick,  accurate  sense 
of  relative  values,  are  the  equipment  in  mem- 
ory, will,  mind,  and  intellect  which  a  child 
gets  from  good  mental  training. 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

I*OS  RJiOEUES,  Cflli. 


PEDAGOGIC   THEORIES 

"We  all  know  from  memories  of  our  own 
childhood,  if  not  from  watching  other  little 
children,  that  the  number  of  things  happen- 
ing at  once  in  the  development  of  a  child 
is  as  great  as  the  number  of  his  faculties 
and  emotions,  characteristics,  tendencies,  and 
tastes ;  all  these  things  are  developing  at  once. 
Yet  lately  it  has  been  a  common  process  of 
educational  theories  to  start  with  the  uncon- 
scious assumption  that  only  one  thing  at  a 
time  can  happen  in  a  child's  development. 
Some  of  these  theories  are  so  very  untenable 
that  it  would  be  interesting  to  investigate 
how  many  of  them  were  set  going  by  childless 
persons  of  an  ingenious  turn,  who  had  not 
even  a  niece  or  a  nephew  under  familiar  ob- 
servation. 

Still,  no  educational  theory,  however  fan- 
tastic or  rigidly  logical,  was  ever  without  its 
solid  basis  in  valuable  fact.    What  is  fantas- 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  67 

tic  readily  disengages  itself,  and  disappears 
by  mere  lightness.  What  is  logical  but  un- 
sound is  harder  to  dispose  of.  The  very  fact 
of  its  being  logical  makes  it  seem  unavoidably 
right.  The  very  word  seems  to  involve  rigid 
accuracy.  Nevertheless,  logical  conclusions 
are  not  necessarily  true  conclusions.  Logic  * 
is  a  matter  of  words,  not  of  facts.  It  is  an 
excellent  aid  to  investigation,  but  it  cannot 
even  test  its  own  premises;  once  having 
started  a  course  of  logical  thought  from  cer- 
tain premises,  we  are  not  at  liberty  to  take 
up  any  further  considerations  along  the  way. 
Obviously  such  a  device  is  not  suited  to  be 
much  used  on  educational  problems,  for  all 
education  is  a  perpetual  process  of  taking 
fresh  matter  into  consideration.  Moreover, 
preconceived  and  carefully  elaborated  theories 
are  a  bar  to  unbiased  observation.  Sound 
educational  methods  are  discovered  by  in- 
ductive   reasoning,   not   by   deductive   logic 

1  By  this  is  meant  deductive  logic,  the  mathematical  art  of  reason- 
ing from  premises  with  precision.  Inductive  logic,  so  called,  is  not 
strictly  logic  at  all.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  words.  It  is  a  studying  of 
the  relations  between  facts,  and  should  be  called  inductive  reasoning. 
Logic  proper  deals  with  logi,  i.  e.,  words,  and  is  carried  on  by  the 
mind.  Inductive  reasoning  is  a  matter  of  the  intellect. 


68      HOME,  SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

And  the  solid  basis  which  is  in  all  theories, 
however  mistaken,  is  discovered  by  the  same 
process  of  observation  and  real  intellectual 
thought. 

The  following  survey  aims  to  show,  in  re- 
gard to  various  current  theories  of  the  day, 
how  they  all  have  this  double  character  of  a 
true  basis  and  an  unsafe  superstructure.  All 
are  worth  using;  none  is  to  be  pushed  to  a 
logical  completeness  of  use. 

Of  Natural  Development.  It  is  true 
that  a  child's  natural  impulses,  tastes,  and 
purposes  should  be  given  room  to  expand. 

It  is  not  true  that  for  this  expansion  he 
needs  absorb  the  whole  house,  the  whole 
day,  or  the  whole  comfort  of  his  house- 
mates. 

Moreover,  his  powers  of  self-control,  and 
of  conforming  to  other  people's  purposes, 
also  need  room  to  expand. 

Of  Lying  Fallow.  It  is  true  that  a 
child  may  be  over-urged,  over-trained,  and 
over-occupied  during  his  early  years. 

It  is  not  true  that  in  order  to  avoid  these 
dangers   we   must  leave  him  unguided   and 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  69 

unrestricted  in  intellectual  ways  until  he  is 
eight  years  old,  or,  as  one  theory  has  it,  even 
until  he  is  twelve  years  old. 

Moreover,  a  child  may  be  left  inactive, 
inaccurate,  and  desultory  so  long  that  he 
is  never  after  able  to  gain  a  thorough  use 
of  his  own  faculties.  The  mind,  if  it  is  to 
keep  in  health  and  grow,  must  from  the  be- 
ginning be  exercised  constantly  and  progres- 
sively. 

Of  Early  Learning.  It  is  true  that  a 
child  under  seven  years  old  should  not  be 
given  obligatory  tasks  of  long-continued  men- 
tal effort;  and  should  not  be  put  into  the  fixed 
machinery  of  a  formal  school. 

It  is  not  true  that  a  child  under  seven  is 
injured  by  mental  effort,  and  must  be  spared 
from  acquiring  any  ideas  except  those  which 
he  can  invent  or  discover  for  himself. 

Moreover,  the  natural  curiosity  of  a  child 
under  seven  will  carry  him  easily  through  the 
beginnings  of  most  knowledge,  if  he  is  given 
kindly  opportunity. 

Of  Learning  to  Read  by  a  Special 
Method.       It  is  true  that  a  child  will  learn 


70      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

to  read  quickly  if  he  is  taught  by  some  sys- 
tematic method. 

It  is  not  true  that  any  one  special  method  is 
vastly  superior  to  all  others  or  that  a  system- 
atic combination  of  all  is  not  best. 

Moreover,  some  very  quick  methods  foster 
inaccuracy,  and,  if  a  child  begins  to  read  nor- 
mally early,  spontaneity  takes  the  place  of  sys- 
tem or  rapidity. 

Of  Kindergarten.  It  is  true  that  little 
children,  like  all  human  creatures,  learn  much 
unconsciously  through  games  and  amuse- 
ment; and  enjoy  using  their  fingers  and  their 
fancy.    Systematic  work,  too,  benefits  them. 

It  is  not  true  that  the  unconscious  way  is 
the  only  safe  and  valuable  way  for  them  to 
learn,  and  the  only  kind  of  educative  plea- 
sure which  they  can  enjoy.  Children,  like 
all  of  us,  enjoy  steady  conscious  work.  They 
delight  in  the  victories  of  purpose  and  effort. 

Moreover,  their  capacities  grow  rapidly, 
and  often  a  game  or  occupation  which  to- 
day is  educative  is  mere  repetition  next  week. 
Again,  the  impression  that  work  should  seem 
like  play  is  a  very  dangerous  one  to  insist 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  71 

upon;  it  weakens  the  will  and  the  courage. 
Also,  there  is  danger  in  the  spectacle  of  grown 
people,  day  after  day  making  a  whole  morn- 
ing's occupation  out  of  childish  games  and 
pleasures,  and  laboriously  teaching  what  is 
perfectly  easy  to  learn;  it  injures  a  child's 
sense  of  values  and  halts  his  self-dependence. 

Of  Enjoying  School.  It  is  true  that  un- 
willing learning  brings  small  gain,  and  that 
a  child  should  be  in  the  habit  of  enjoying  his 
school  work.  It  is  true  that  his  tasks  should 
not  seem  a  burden  to  him. 

It  is  not  true  that  unwilling  learning  brings 
no  gain,  and  it  is  not  true  that  a  state  of 
exuberant  conscious  enthusiasm  is  a  healthy 
mental  condition,  if  pursued  as  a  habit;  or 
that  doing  what  is  easy  is  either  peculiarly 
pleasant  or  particularly  valuable. 

Moreover,  a  steady  willing  effort  to  do 
what  is  difficult  and  not  in  itself  agreeable  is 
one  of  the  most  pleasurable  as  well  as  one  of 
the  most  valuable  mental  occupations. 

Of  Racial  Recapitulation.  It  is  true 
that  a  child  has  within  him  the  instincts  of 
the  earlier  stages  of  civilization,  and  that  he 


72      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

is  more  like  a  savage  at  three  years  old  than 
he  is  likely  to  be  at  twenty. 

It  is  not  true  that  any  child  develops  in 
orderly  sequence  and  proportion,  through 
the  evolutionary  stages  of  the  race,  or  that 
he  leaves  behind  him,  as  he  grows,  the  more 
primitive  powers.  Neither  is  it  true  that  any 
two  children  develop  in  the  same  order  or  at 
the  same  rate. 

Moreover,  every  child  also  contains  the 
tastes,  instincts,  and  capacities  of  the  coming 
race,  and  is  in  himself  a  prophecy  of  men  to 
be.  If  we  condone  his  savagery,  we  are  likely 
to  lose  the  opportunity  to  develop  his  finer 
self.  The  study  of  history  throws  light  upon 
child  study,  not  because  children  are  bar- 
barians, but  because  barbarians  are  children. 
The  powers  are  well-nigh  identical.  The 
civilized  nature  is,  however,  more  developed 
from  the  very  start. 

Of  Manual  Training.  It  is  true  — fun- 
damentally and  importantly  true  —  that,  since 
we  have  bodies  and  live  in  a  material  world 
which  supplies  us  with  all  the  substance  of 
our  thoughts  and  knowledge,  it  is  necessary 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  73 

for  sound  thought  and  action  that  we  be  fa- 
miliar through  our  bodily  senses  with  the 
actual  nature  of  this  world  and  with  the  way 
to  handle  it  efficiently.  It  is  true  that  manual 
training  can  be  used  to  rouse  dull  brains  and 
to  steady  the  over-intellectual. 

It  is  not  true  that  manual  or  any  sentient 
training  gives  intellectual  training  or  gives 
ethical  training.  It  gives  considerable  men- 
tal training,  and  considerable  training  of  the 
so-called  moral  qualities  ;  that  is,  it  trains 
the  brain  and  the  instincts,  but  it  involves 
scarcely  any  intellectual  activity  and  has  no 
moral  purpose.  It  touches  principally  the 
perceptions  and  the  will.  It  is  in  no  particu- 
lar a  substitute  for  book  work  or  for  good 
behavior. 

Moreover,  if  a  large  part  of  one's  youth  be 
spent  in  it,  wandering  thoughts  and  a  prosaic 
mind  are  fostered. 

Of  Laboratory  Methods.  It  is  true 
that  the  result  of  study  which  has  omitted 
practical  acquaintance  with  the  material  of 
which  it  treats,  is  barren  and  factitious. 

It  is  not  true  that  in  order  to  get  practical 


74      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

acquaintance  with  material,  a  student  must 
go  through  all  the  work  which  the  original 
discoverers  had  to  endure.  Nor  is  it  true 
that  an  intelligent  general  knowledge  of  a 
subject  cannot  be  gained  largely  from  other 
people.  Such  knowledge  is  no  bar  to  sub- 
sequent original  work. 

Moreover,  for  general  purposes  technical 
knowledge  is  not  necessary,  and  the  time 
spent  by  a  child  or  youth  in  learning  the 
intricacies  of  several  subjects  by  actual  con- 
tact could  be  much  better  spent  in  learning 
the  larger  aspect  of  many.  One  subject  of 
each  branch,  known  by  the  intimate  labora- 
tory method,  serves  as  a  type  for  all  others. 

Of  Foreigners  as  Teachers.  It  is 
true  that  a  cultivated  foreigner  speaks  his 
native  language  with  a  desirable  accent,  and 
that  in  speaking  a  foreign  language  a  well- 
educated  child  should  imitate  a  good  accent. 
It  is  true  that  older  pupils  can  benefit  much 
from  talking  with  a  good  foreign  teacher  in 
his  own  language.  In  this  way  they  begin  to 
get  at  the  real  genius  of  the  foreign  language, 
and  to  see  the  nation  through  its  own  eyes; 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  75 

and  so  they  may  best  get  into  sympathy  with 
its  point  of  view. 

It  is  not  true  that  no  cultivated  person 
of  the  child's  own  nationality  can  speak  a 
foreign  language  with  a  desirable  accent  so 
as  to  make  a  good  model  for  pupils,  or  that 
a  good  accent  is  the  chief  desideratum  in 
knowing  a  foreign  language. 

Moreover,  a  foreigner  almost  never  under- 
stands the  habitual  mental  and  moral  atti- 
tudes of  his  pupils,  and  therefore  is  seldom 
a  first-rate  teacher  for  them,  and  is  almost 
never  a  good  disciplinarian. 

Of  Culture  Studies.  It  is  true  that 
some  studies  appeal  more  than  others  to  the 
sympathies,  to  the  aesthetic  sense,  and  to  the 
intellect  as  distinguished  from  the  mind. 

It  is  not  true  that  some  studies  are  totally 
without  such  appeal,  or  that  any  make  only 
this  appeal. 

Moreover,  any  study,  no  matter  how  great 
an  opportunity  it  gives  for  culture,  can  be  so 
taught  as  not  to  suggest  a  hint  of  culture; 
and  any  study,  no  matter  how  apparently  bar- 
ren of  opportunity,  can  be  so  taught  as  to  be 


76      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

redolent  of  culture,  —  for  culture  lies  more  in 
treatment  than  in  material. 

Of  Adolescence.  It  is  true  that  with 
adolescence  comes  a  great  change  and  ex- 
pansion of  nature,  fuller  depth  of  personal 
feeling,  increased  self-consciousness,  need  of 
growing  independence,  and  all  the  rest. 

It  is  not  true  that  this  change  and  expan- 
sion should  be  looked  upon  as  consequent  to 
the  sexual  development  or  that  all  the  ex- 
aggerations of  this  period  must  be  treated 
with  reference  to  the  sexual  functions.  It  is 
a  period  of  expansion  and  change  in  every 
function.  The  various  changes,  bodily,  mental, 
or  emotional,  are  merely  concomitant;  no  one 
of  them  is  exclusively  a  cause  of  the  others. 

Moreover,  the  sexual  change,  although  it 
is  the  least  ethereal  part  of  the  adolescent 
growth,  is  in  itself  dignified,  normal,  and 
without  disadvantage.  Looking  upon  it  as 
a  complicated  misfortune  and  difficult  prob- 
lem is  entirely  unnecessary  and  misleading, 
and  is  seriously  unwise. 

Of  Home  Schooling.  It  is  true  that 
persons  who  have  been  educated  wholly  at 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  77, 

home  by  first-rate  teachers  are  generally  highly 
developed,  sensitive,  and  single-minded,  spon- 
taneous, eager,  and  independent,  and  are  apt 
to  have  a  keen  sense  of  the  reality  of  facts. 

It  is  not  true  that  home  education  can  be 
depended  upon  to  produce  such  results,  for 
they  imply  first-rate  teaching.  Few  parents 
are  willing  to  pay  high  enough  to  secure  first- 
rate  private  teaching,  and  still  fewer  first-rate 
teachers  are  interested  to  confine  themselves  to 
private  work.  Consequently  the  home-taught 
child  is  usually  a  poorly  trained  child. 

Moreover,  a  child  reared  wholly  at  home 
misses  every  by-product  of  going  to  school, 
the  good  ones  along  with  the  deleterious.  He 
is  usually  over-sensitive,  and  seldom  catches 
in  after  life  the  natural  sense  of  fellowship, 
or  the  ease  of  competition  and  the  ready  ac- 
ceptance of  criticism,  which  a  good  school 
makes  possible. 

Of  Public  Schools.  (a.)  It  is  true  that 
to  advance  the  common  weal  every  demo- 
cratic community  must  maintain  free  schools 
for  its  children,  and  must  aim  to  teach  in  those 
schools  whatever  proves  most  efficacious  in 


78      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

the  making  of  good  citizens,  —  if  the  children 
cannot  learn  it  elsewhere. 

It  is  not  true  that  every  child  in  that  com- 
munity will  necessarily  be  the  better  citizen 
for  going  to  such  schools,  even  when  they  are 
good. 

Moreover,  very  few  communities  main- 
tain really  good  public  schools.  Most  public 
schools  are  simply  better  in  varying  degrees 
than  no  schools. 

(6.)  It  is  true  that  in  a  homogeneous  and 
enlightened  community  a  public  school  can 
supply  all  the  formal  mental  training  neces- 
sary to  any  normal  child,  and  that  attendance 
upon  such  a  school  in  such  a  community  is 
on  the  whole  desirable  for  every  normal  child. 

It  is  not  true  that  this  universal  attendance 
is  desirable  in  an  ordinary  American  com- 
munity, where  the  amount  of  home  training 
received  by  the  children  ranges  from  none  at 
all  to  the  most  perfect  yet  attained  in  civili- 
zation. For  a  child  does  not  always  get  the 
mental  training  he  needs,  simply  by  being 
taught  suitable  subjects.  A  highly  developed, 
well-trained  child,  who  constantly  hears  edu- 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  79 

cated  talk  at  home,  is  capable  of  a  much  more 
rapid  and  rich  treatment  of  any  subject  than 
the  child  of  an  uninformed  home  can  usually 
cope  with. 

Moreover,  a  public  school,  the  overruling 
majority  of  whose  pupils  come  from  positively 
primitive  homes,  must  teach,  and  teach 
crudely,  many  things  which  a  more  fortu- 
nate child  gets  naturally  and  much  better 
at  home. 

(c.)  It  is  true  that  a  child  who  goes  to  a  pub- 
lic school  gets  a  varied  experience  of  human 
nature,  discovers  that  his  own  home  ways  are 
not  the  only  ways,  and  learns  to  decide  and 
choose  for  himself,  since  he  finds  no  con- 
sensus of  public  opinion  which  he  can  or 
need  respect. 

It  is  not  true  that  this  sort  of  personal  inde- 
pendence is  necessarily  a  good  thing.  It  may 
engender  that  go-as-you-please  self-confidence 
and  disregard  of  other  people's  standards  and 
tastes  which  is  so  much  the  mark  of  a  crude, 
uncultivated  mind.  Or,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  may  make  the  undiscriminating  youth  con- 
clude that  where  there  are  so  many  opinions. 


80      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

it  is  not  necessary  to  hold  to  any  very  strongly. 
The  ameliorating  and  steadying  effect  of  a 
strongly  felt  public  opinion,  such  as  exists  in 
a  well-established  private  school,  is  often  very 
excellent;  vigorous  natures  are  ameliorated, 
weak  ones  are  steadied  by  it. 

Moreover,  the  standards  of  a  company  of 
parents  who  have  grasped  and  are  using  the 
full  inheritance  of  civilization  are  many  gen- 
erations more  correct  and  discriminating 
than  the  standards  of  a  heterogeneous  mass, 
most  of  whom  do  not  apprehend  the  signi- 
ficance of  fine  distinctions.  "Being  par- 
ticular" is  a  bugbear  to  undeveloped  minds. 

BUT 

The  tendency  of  private  schools  is  to  be 
conciliating  and  narrow.  In  order  to  be  as 
good  as  a  good  public  school,  a  private  school 
must  be  vigorously  exacting  and  sincerely 
democratic. 

Of  Coeducation.  It  is  true  that  boys 
and  girls,  youths  and  maids,  men  and  women, 
should  be  upon  terms  of  comfortable  intel- 
lectual and  social  fellowship  and  of  mutual 
understanding.   Every  means  should  be  taken 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  81 

to  secure  such  a  relation.  It  is  true  that  one 
of  the  best  means  to  secure  such  a  relation  is 
to  provide  their  early  schooling  as  well  as  all 
other  early  occupations  in  common.  The  Old 
World  way  of  early  separation  has  fostered 
much  mutual  misunderstanding,  masculine 
selfishness,  and  feminine  foolishness.  The 
New  World  way  has  brought  mutual  under- 
standing, unprecedented  masculine  sympathy, 
and  feminine  common-sense.  If  we  yield  in 
this  country  to  a  tendency  toward  separation, 
we  shall  revert  to  the  old  conditions,  forfeit- 
ing our  obvious  preeminence  and  clear  ad- 
vantage. 

It  is  not  true  that  going  to  school  together 
necessarily  forwards  this  relation,  or  that  the 
fellowship  cannot  be  had  without  common 
schooling.  The  behavior  of  the  parents  is  the 
controlling  factor. 

Moreover,  when  boys  and  girls  reach  their 
"teens,"  the  kind  of  interest  which  they  take  in 
one  another  begins  to  change,  and  no  amount 
of  care  at  home  can  prevent  an  element  of 
excitement  from  creeping  in.  At  this  time 
intellectual  work  had  generally  best  be  done 


82      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

apart,  though  the  social  life  and  intellectual 
interests  should  go  on  in  common,  as  frank 
and  friendly  as  before. 

Of  Boarding  Schools.  It  is  true  that 
the  circumstances  of  many  families  make 
a  boarding  school  the  wise  solution  for  some 
of  their  problems.  It  is  true  that  a  boarding 
school  can  give  to  a  city  child  country  surround- 
ings, or  to  a  country  child  city  surroundings. 
It  can  make  the  child's  occupations  well-regu- 
lated, wholesome,  and  well-proportioned.  It 
can  give  all  the  influences  of  strong  public 
opinion  and  the  discipline  of  common  duties, 
avoiding  the  home  disadvantage  of  special 
criticism. 

It  is  not  true  that  the  ideal  life  for  boy 
or  girl  could  be  to  live  always  in  a  boarding 
school.  Because  of  numbers,  a  boarding 
school  must  always  be  over-formal,  over- 
regulated,  and  unnaturally  impersonal.  Uni- 
formity is  its  fixed  limit,  often  reached,  never 
out  of  sight,  and  kept  away  only  by  unending 
vigilant  intelligence. 

Moreover,  a  boarding  school  seldom  gives 
to  a  boy  or  girl  unavoidable  opportunity  to 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  83 

gain  familiar  knowledge  of  those  who  are 
different  from  themselves  in  sex,  age,  or  con- 
dition. At  school  a  boy  need  see  no  one  un- 
officially except  boys  like  himself.  He  is  not 
forced  to  share  any  lives  but  those  which  are 
his  own  in  kind.  Girls  cannot  be  seen  in- 
formally, nor  can  women  often  be  known  with 
exceptional  familiarity;  all  adults  at  the 
school  must  bear  the  same  official  relation 
to  each  boy  that  they  bear  to  fifty  or  three 
hundred  and  fifty  other  boys,  and  frequently 
they  bear  no  unofficial  relation  at  all.  Ac- 
quaintance with  servants,  laborers,  trades- 
men, doctors,  engineers,  farmers,  is  only 
casual  or  non-existent.  Consequently  the 
boarding-school  life,  like  all  institutional 
life,  tends  to  exaggerate  the  inmate's  in- 
stinctive exclusiveness.  Man  thinks  easily  of 
those  who  are  like  himself.  He  thinks  with 
discomfort  of  those  who  are  different.  So  he 
looks  upon  his  own  kind,  the  people  he  is 
used  to,  with  satisfaction.  He  looks  upon  out- 
siders with  suspicion,  scorn,  or  ridicule;  or 
else  he  takes  no  account  of  them  at  all. 
So  that,  while  boarding-school  life  is  often 


84      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

a  happy  issue  out  of  serious  difficulties,  it  is 
not  a  natural,  all-round  sort  of  experience, 
and  in  most  boarding  schools  the  inherent 
drawbacks  are  not  sufficiently  guarded 
against.  Fortunately  there  is  in  America 
the  long  summer  vacation  to  help  keep  the 
balance. 

Of  Examinations.  It  is  true  that  ex- 
aminations can  be  passed  without  a  sound 
knowledge  of  the  subjects  concerned  and  with- 
out a  good  mental  habit  or  training. 

It  is  not  true  that  ability  to  pass  an  exami- 
nation interferes  with  sound  knowledge  or 
good  mental  condition. 

Moreover,  wise  examinations,  wisely  pre- 
pared for,  give  a  definite  comprehensible  aim 
and  form  to  school  study,  which  is  of  great 
service  in  securing  mental  firmness,  clear- 
ness, and  accuracy. 

Of  Pedagogic  Theories  in  general. 
It  is  true  that  during  the  last  fifty  years  close 
study  of  educational  problems  has  immea- 
surably bettered  the  ideal  of  teaching,  and 
has  made  wise  teachers  able  to  train  average 
children  to  much  more  efficient  use  of  them- 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  85 

selves.  Psychology,  pedagogics,  and  child 
study  have  great  and  indispensable  value. 
Educational  theory  enlightens  and  enlarges 
educational  practice. 

It  is  not  true  that  pedagogy  has  been  re- 
duced to  a  science.  In  the  nature  of  things, 
it  cannot  be  other  than  a  systematized  series 
of  suggestions,  a  condensed  process  of  draw- 
ing attention  to  conspicuous  facts  and  pos- 
sibilities in  mental  training.  Teaching  is  an  Jji  3 
art.  No  art  can  be  taught  by  words  or  re- 
duced to  rules.  It  must  be  learned  by  instinct, 
perception,  and  practice.  Educational  theories 
are  good  as  suggestion,  not  as  prescription. 

Moreover,  theory  has  had  an  unwarranted 
hold  upon  our  school  practice  during  the  last 
twenty-five  years.  Numberless  elaborated 
theories  have  been  reduced  to  practice.  Each 
was  built  upon  detached  observation  of  some 
isolated  truth  which  had  struck  some  in- 
genious-minded person.  Each  had  a  central 
stem  of  truth,  surrounded  by  an  artificial 
efflorescence  of  logical  fancy.  Each  theory 
offered  a  more  or  less  complete  system  of 
education,  consistent  within  itself,  but  wholly 


j 


86      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

disregardful  of  a  host  of  surrounding  truths 
equally  salient  and  potent  in  actual  life.  The 
builders  of  these  insufficient  theories  were 
fascinated  with  the  idea  of  consistent  com- 
pleteness; they  were  in  love  with  the  vision 
of  rounded  perfection.  Now,  this  building  of 
systems  by  conformity  and  continuity,  this 
classifying  and  arranging,  is  the  special  talent 
of  the  mind  by  itself.  Active  minds  want  to 
know  a  cause  and  a  rule  for  everything.  They 
try  to  understand  everything  and  to  put  every- 
thing in  its  place.  They  see  the  beauty  and 
use  of  order.  Active  intellects  see  this  and 
more.  They  see  that  orderly  systems  of  rule 
and  logic  are  good  in  routine  and  in  science. 
And  they  see  also  that  in  art  and  life  such 
restrictions  are  impracticable  and  not  to  be 
desired.  Completeness  would  limit  life.  Con- 
sistency would  restrict  art.  Life  and  art  are 
large,  limitless,  unrestricted.  They  must  have 
free  space  to  grow  and  shift,  to  change  and 
interchange  their  parts.  No  art  can  be  ex- 
pressed in  any  but  its  own  medium.  Each 
life  presents  new  conditions.  So  every  theory 
and  all  theories  are  too  small  and  too  special 


PEDAGOGIC  THEORIES  87 

to  serve  as  guides  in  education.  While  they 
remain  theories,  however,  they  do  good,  for 
they  stimulate  practical  imagination  to  action. 
But  when  they  are  put  into  logical  practice, 
ardently,  conscientiously,  and  exclusively, 
their  limitations  appear.  Preoccupied  with 
fresh-found  truths,  they  fail  to  allow  for  the 
existence  of  time-honored  facts.  Thus,  in 
the  last  twenty-five  years,  many  children  have 
received  a  limited  advantage  in  some  one 
portion  of  their  beings,  while  several  of  the 
most  obvious  and  important  of  their  needs 
have  gone  unprovided  for.  A  generation  of 
youth  has  come  up  into  the  colleges  and  into 
the  business  world  unprovided  with  some  of 
the  simplest  tools  of  efficiency.  That  genera- 
tion has  not  yet  passed  by,  for  the  schools  have 
not  yet  come  to  their  senses. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  specify  the  theories 
that  have  done  most  harm  to  our  schools 
and  are  still  acting  injuriously.  Every  one 
knows  something  of  them.  He  has  seen  the 
results  in  himself,  in  his  vounger  brothers,  or 
in  his  children.  It  is  these  results  that  earnest 
parents  and  wise  teachers  work  against.    The 


88      HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

value  of  theory  and  discussion,  speculation 
and  cautious  experiment,  they  fully  recognize, 
but  they  seriously  set  themselves  to  prevent 
these  efficient  aids  from  being  put  in  posi- 
tions of  absolute  command.  The  need  is  that 
perception,  experience,  and  common  sense 
should  rule,  while  theory  urgently  advises. 


HOME  TEACHING   IN 
BABYHOOD 

For  children  of  three,  four,  or  five  years,  all 
beginnings  should  be  unconscious.  Just  as 
a  child  of  three  months  does  not  know  that 
he  is  beginning  to  be  taught  self-control, 
just  as  a  child  of  a  year  does  not  know  that 
he  is  beginning  to  walk  and  talk,  so  he  should 
not  be  aware  when  he  begins  to  learn  reading, 
writing,  arithmetic,  geometry,  French,  Ger- 
man, history,  geography,  science,  music,  art 
of  any  sort.  When  at  six  or  seven  he  goes  to 
school,  a  child  should  find  himself  already 
interested  in  all  these  things  and  therefore 
happy  to  learn  more  of  them.  It  is  enough  in 
his  first  months  of  school  that  the  surround- 
ings and  methods  of  learning  are  new;  the 
task  and  strain  of  becoming  self-aware  are  tax 
enough  upon  his  energies.  There  should  not 
be  the  burden  added  of  unfamiliar  subjects. 
Four  generations  ago,  little  children  both  in 


90      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND   VACATION 

England  and  America  were  taught  the  rudi- 
ments at  home,  as  a  matter  of  course.  The 
mother,  the  aunt,  or  the  older  sister  usually 
was  the  teacher. 

These  unconscious  beginnings  require  home 
guidance,  —  guidance  by  the  mother  or  some 
one  in  the  family,  not  by  a  specially  provided 
and  unfamiliar  personality.  By  this  means 
the  first  learning  comes  naturally  as  a  part  of 
life's  adventures,  and  is  wholly  healthful  for 
the  child.  He  scarcely  knows  that  he  is  being 
taught.  But  most  mothers  object  that  they 
cannot  teach.  They  do  not  stop  to  observe 
that  there  cannot  be  anything  difficult  about 
such  teaching,  for  the  child  of  six  teaches 
the  child  of  five  just  such  things.  In  a  large 
family  the  younger  children  often  pick  it  all 
up  from  the  older,  so  that  no  one  knows 
when  they  learned  to  read,  etc.  A  self-dis- 
trustful mother  forgets  this,  and  imagines 
teaching  to  be  a  technical  mystery.  School 
teaching  is  indeed  an  art,  but  all  early  learn- 
ing is  spontaneous,  and  requires  in  the  teacher 
not  art  but  friendship.  It  comes  by  active 
curiosity,  active  imitation,  and  eager  experi- 


HOME  TEACHING   IN  BABYHOOD      91 

ment.  It  asks  from  a  mother  only  willing 
interest,  which  makes  her  cheerfully  ready  to 
impart  and  instigate. 

The  result  of  it  is,  that  working  either  with 
hand  or  brain  becomes  to  the  child  an  integral 
part  of  life.  He  can  never  think  of  it  as  a  thing 
apart,  required  by  outsiders  and  only  in  the 
obviously  artificial  existence  of  school  hours. 
The  spontaneousness  of  his  learning  gives 
him  an  eager  sense  of  its  reality,  and  the 
undirected,  unsystematized,  unrestricted  way 
of  it  gives  him  independence  and  initiative. 
A  second  result  is,  that  he  is  never  without 
resources,  for  he  has  had  an  intimate  com- 
panionship since  his  babyhood  with  a  great 
variety  of  progressive  occupations. 

Since  the  way  is  not  a  plotted  and  com- 
plicated path  of  system,  any  interested  mother 
with  the  right  implements  can  put  her  child 
in  the  way  of  these  good  beginnings.  She  has 
only  to  give  her  child  the  chance  of  being 
interested  in  desirable  things,  and  then  to  en- 
courage curiosity,  imitation,  and  experiment 
by  her  ready  interest  and  sympathetic  ad- 
miration, along  with  plenty  of  cheerful  help- 


92      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

ing.  She  will  find  they  learn  in  a  most  curious 
way,  by  pauses  and  leaps.  She  gives  them  the 
clue  and  then  lets  them  draw  out  the  thread; 
lets  them  follow  the  trace  themselves,  thread- 
ing the  labyrinth  with  all  its  surprises,  and 
arriving  alone  and  triumphant  at  the  centre. 
Being  taught  actually  hampers  the  rapidity  of 
personal  thought.  A  child  well  started  learns 
many  things  fastest  by  itself.  She  need  only 
be  careful  not  to  force  attention  or  insist  at 
first  upon  any  learning  as  a  task,  and  not  to 
try  to  make  them  reason  about  the  material. 
Even  very  simple  reasoning  is  apt  to  strain 
their  understanding.  Little  children  do  not 
compare  things  much.  They  learn  each  thing 
as  it  stands.  Of  course,  there  is  a  constant 
unconscious  classification  going  on  in  their 
minds,  but  most  of  what  interests  them  is 
noticing,  imitating,  reproducing,  classifying, 
and  recording.  Observation  and  memory  are 
their  only  really  developed  powers. 

Specifically,  one  may  say  that  the  method 
for  home  teaching  in  babyhood  is  as  unme- 
thodical as  this :  — 


HOME  TEACHING   IN   BABYHOOD      93 

FOR    ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Have  in  the  house  any  (or  all)  of  the  good 
collections  of  verse  for  children.  Read  or  re- 
peat poems  to  the  child.  What  he  enjoys  he 
will  ask  to  hear  again.  Do  not  be  afraid  of 
what  seems  "too  old,"  unless  it  has  in  it  some- 
thing to  frighten  or  burden  a  child.  Repeat 
a  favorite  often,  and  as  soon  as  he  shows  a 
power  to  repeat  any  part  of  it  himself,  be 
pleased.  Do  not  insist  at  first  on  the  learning. 
Merely  admire. 

Do  the  same  sort  of  thing  with  prose,  al- 
lowing for  the  fact  that  for  very  little  people 
prose  is  harder  to  follow  and  not  so  attrac- 
tive as  poetry.  Following  the  thread  of  a 
story  is  too  taxing  for  a  very  inexperienced 
mind.  Older  children  of  from  four  to  six 
should  enjoy  being  read  to  for  half  an  hour 
or  more. 

FOR   LEARNING   TO   READ 

Supply  alphabet  blocks,  with  pictures,  as 
early  as  two  years  old.  Call  the  letters  by 
name  often  in  playing  with  the  child.  Play 
games  with  them;  e.g.,  turn  all  the  pictures 


94      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

down  and  guess  what  picture  is  under  each 
letter,  etc. 

To  a  child  of  three,  sing  the  alphabet. 
When  he  wants  to  use  a  pencil,  make  the 
letters,  printing  or  writing,  sometimes  for 
him  to  copy,  or  let  him  copy  from  the  blocks, 
or  from  a  primer.  Get  the  primer  before  there 
are  any  regular  times  set  for  lessons.  Often 
sound  over  simple  words,  phonetically,  and 
let  the  child  guess  what  they  are. 

At  four  years,  take  the  primer.  It  is  best 
based  on  the  letter  and  syllable  method,  not 
on  the  word  or  the  picture  method.  Speak 
of  the  letters  by  name  as  well  as  by  sound. 
Have  the  child  sit  down  with  you  every  day 
for  ten  minutes  or  as  long  as  he  is  easily  in- 
terested. Read  to  him,  pointing  out  the  words 
and  often  sounding  the  letters.  Let  him  talk 
about  it  and  ask  questions  and  digress  as 
much  as  he  chooses.  Little  by  little  he  will 
begin  to  catch  the  idea  and  begin  to  guess, 
imitate,  and  experiment.  Praise  and  encour- 
age. Before  the  year  is  over,  he  has  the  idea 
of  reading. 

Be  sure  that  he  knows  the  alphabet. 


HOME  TEACHING  IN  BABYHOOD      95 

FOR   WRITING 

From  printing  letters  at  random  when  he 
is  three  years  old,  let  him  go  on  to  copying 
whole  words  when  he  likes.  At  four  show 
him  the  writing  letters.  He  will  soon  like  to 
try  copying  them,  too.  Or  begin  at  the  very 
beginning  with  script,  if  you  choose. 

A  typewriter  is  most  useful  here,  as  a 
working  plaything. 

FOR   ARITHMETIC 

A  child  of  two  likes  to  learn  to  count  as 
part  of  learning  to  talk.  Encourage  this,  but 
try  to  make  10  the  stopping  place,  until  he 
has  learned  so  far  thoroughly. 

At  about  three  years  old  begin  to  count 
things.  He  will  probably  understand  already 
how  many  3  is.  Count  things  at  the  table; 
count  beads,  blocks,  etc.,  at  any  time  you 
happen  to  think  of  it.  Now  and  then  see  if 
he  can  count  them.    If  he  can,  show  your 

pleasure. 

At  six  let  him  owTn  an  abacus,  and  count, 
add,  subtract,  divide,  and  multiply  on  it. 
At  about  four,  having  let  him  see  the  figures 


96      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

often  in  order,  and  perhaps  learn  their  names, 
let  him  learn  to  copy  them,  but  not  beyond  10. 
Take  an  interest  with  him  in  adding  l's  and 
in  subtracting  them.  As  he  gains  skill,  try 
him  with  more  difficult  problems. 

During  his  fifth  year,  perhaps,  show  him 
about  halves,  thirds,  and  quarters,  etc.,  with 
real  things  in  the  course  of  conversation. 

FOR   LANGUAGES 

Children  find  one  sound  as  good  as  another 
to  represent  an  object.  They  quickly  learn  to 
understand  one  another's  baby  talk  and  special 
words.  So  the  notion  of  a  foreign  language 
is  easy  to  them.  One  word  is  as  sensible  as 
another  to  learn,  and  several  words  for  the 
same  thing  do  not  seem  out  of  the  way.  Is 
not  a  dish  called  also  a  plate,  a  saucer,  a  bowl, 
and  what  not? 

Say  phrases,  sentences,  and  little  jingles  to 
him  in  foreign  languages.  When  he  begins  to 
pick  up  English  jingles,  give  him  a  chance 
to  learn  French  and  German  jingles,  too. 

Have  at  least  one  picture  book  with  jingles 
and  counting,  etc.,  in  French  and  one  in  Ger- 


HOME  TEACHING  IN  BABYHOOD      97 

man.  Read  them  often,  and  explain  them  as 
you  do  the  English  ones.  A  single  book  or 
two  of  this  sort,  well  selected,  will  give  a  child 
as  useful  a  vocabulary  and  as  much  grammar 
as  he  would  get  at  the  same  age  from  a  foreign 
nurse.  The  nurses  can  be  had,  but  there  are 
serious  reasons  against  them.  The  primers 
used  by  French  and  German  children  are 
good  for  this  purpose.  Some  people  find 
phonographs  a  great  help;  rolls  for  teaching 
foreign  languages  can  be  bought. 

FOR   HISTORY 

When  you  are  telling  stories,  tell  some  of 
them  from  history,  from  the  Bible,  and  later 
from  mythology.  At  five  years  old,  put  a 
simple  history  reader  among  the  child's  story 
books. 

FOR   GEOGRAPHY 

In  his  play  with  blocks  and  sticks,  a  child 
outlines  houses,  stables,  and  roads  for  its  dolls 
and  itself,  —  mere  plans  without  elevation. 
At  four  years  or  earlier,  draw  just  such  plans 
on   paper  when   you  are  telling   stories,  and 


98      HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

later  make  little  maps  of  real  places.  Have 
a  little  pasteboard  globe  and  tell  him  it  looks 
like  a  little  world.  Show  him  places  on  it, 
etc.  Have  books  of  geography  stories.  Have 
a  primary  geography  among  his  books. 

FOR   SCIENCE 

Show  an  interest  in  plants,  beasts,  birds, 
the  sky,  and  the  sea.  Tell  names.  Give  bits 
of  desultory  information.  Answer  questions  if 
you  can,  or  wonder  with  him.  Pull  flowers  to 
pieces  and  call  the  parts  by  name  just  as  you 
call  him  by  name.  In  fact,  share  all  your  own 
pleasure  and  initial  knowledge  of  these  things. 

Have  colored  picture  books  of  "Birds  and 
their  Homes,"  "Our  Animal  Friends,"  etc. 
Let  him  feel  that  you  feel  the  beautiful 
sacredness,  mystery,  and  wonder  of  life. 

Take  him  to  a  natural  history  museum  if 
it  is  convenient,  but  do  not  exhaust  him  with 
too  much  or  with  many  explanations. 

FOR   ART 

Keep  his  voice  gentle.  The  time  to  teach 
the  correct  use  of  the  speaking  voice  is  while 


HOME  TEACHING  IN  BABYHOOD      99 

he  is  learning  to  talk.  Sing  to  him.  Play  to 
him.  See  how  soon  he  will  sing  a  musical 
sound  after  you.  Sing  the  scale  often,  or 
play  it.  Play  and  sing  the  intervals.  Let 
him  see  music  written.  Encourage  him  to 
imitate  you.  At  four  years  old,  point  out  the 
written  notes  for  the  scale,  etc. 

Some  children  will  sort  colors  by  the  time 
they  are  a  year  old.  Whenever  the  power 
comes,  encourage  it.  Name  the  principal  col- 
ors to  a  child  under  three,  until  he  learns 
them.  Afterwards  do  not  hesitate  to  name 
shades  if  he  is  interested.  Have  reproduc- 
tions of  good  pictures  in  the  house.  Try  to 
have  his  picture  books,  some  of  them,  artis- 
tically good.  Let  him  go  to  an  art  museum 
if  convenient.  Let  him  gaze  and  ask  ques- 
tions, but  do  not  try  to  be  didactic. 

Give  him  a  chance  to  learn  to  do  all  sorts 
of  things  with  his  hands,  particularly  things 
which  will  be  permanent  satisfactions,  like 
painting,  sewing,  sawing,  digging,  etc.  Let 
him  take  the  implements  and  try  to  imitate 
you.  Let  him  get  the  "feel"  of  them  before 
you  try  to  teach  him  the  very  best  methods. 

&IA1E  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

IlOS  flMCEUHS,  CAU. 


100    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

Many  of  the  kindergarten  occupations  are 
good  and  interesting.  Froebel  intended  that 
they  should  be  used  at  home  with  the  mother. 
But  a  child  should  not  be  encouraged  to  keep 
on  doing  them,  after  he  has  grown  capable 
of  doing  something  more  difficult.  A  young 
child's  capability  and  skill  grow  rapidly.  It 
is  a  good  plan  after  he  gets  to  be  four  years 
old  to  manage  so  that  he  always  can  have 
something  visible  accomplished  at  the  end 
of  the  day,  be  it  ever  so  slight,  —  something 
done  which  can  be  shown  to  his  father,  for 
instance.  If  the  mind  after  this  age  is  let 
to  play  all  day,  it  rapidly  grows  averse  to 
ordered  application  and  submission  to  au- 
thority. 

Have  him  do  every  possible  service  for 
himself,  e.  g.,  undressing,  dressing,1  feeding, 
etc.  This  is  very  important.  A  grown  person, 
having  learned  all  these  things,  may  delegate 
them.   A  child  must  not. 

Encourage  him  to  share  the  various  house- 

1  Until  it  is  about  ten  years  old  a  child  should  on  all  ordinary  oc- 
casions be  as  untrammeled  by  clothes  as  a  puppy  is  untrammeled 
by  his  coat.  The  clothes  should  be  made  to  suit  his  occupations, 
not  his  occupations  made  to  suit  his  clothes. 


HOME  TEACHING  IN  BABYHOOD    101 

hold  activities.  No  matter  how  much  paid 
service  is  employed,  he  must  be  allowed  to 
help  himself  and  others.  Errands,  little  serv- 
ices, imitative  activities,  all  are  legitimate 
joy  and  education  to  him.  Do  not  drive  away 
this  kindly  spirit.  Do  not  force  him  to  learn 
afresh,  late  in  life,  after  he  has  lost  the  knack, 
that  there  is  no  pleasure  sweeter  than  help- 
ing other  people.  He  knows  it  instinctively. 
Do  not  becloud  him.  Let  him  do,  clumsily 
and  slowly,  it  may  be,  what  you  or  another 
can  do  readily. 

FOR   EXERCISE 

Besides  his  spontaneous  exercise  of  imi- 
tative play,  a  child  needs  some  organized 
amusement.  Let  him  learn  to  play  compan- 
ionable games  as  soon  as  possible. 

Lead  him  on  to  act  out  his  favorite  poems, 
etc.  Nothing  is  better  exercise  for  all  the 
powers  at  once  than  acting. 

In  short,  all  that  this  early  home  teaching 
involves  is  companionableness  between  mother 
and  child.   Share  with  the  child  all  the  simple 


102    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

elements  of  your  own  interests,  pleasures,  and 
accomplishments,  —  just  as  his  next  older 
brothers  and  sisters  do.  This  solves  most 
happily  the  difficult  question  of  what  to  do 
with  the  child  at  table.  He  learns  to  talk 
about  things  which  interest  both  himself  and 
his  elders. 

It  does  not  involve  trying  to  teach  him 
much  or  systematically,  nor  does  it  involve 
trying  to  answer  all  his  questions.  A  frank 
"I  do  not  know,"  or  "I  cannot  tell  you  that 
till  you  are  older,"  is  often  the  best  answer. 
Nor  need  the  teaching  be  continuously  pro- 
gressive. A  little  child  learns  well  by  fits  and 
starts.  One  day  he  tries  and  makes  a  boggle. 
Let  him  not  try  the  thing  again  for  three  days 
or  two  weeks;  when  he  comes  back  to  it,  he 
has  often  improved  much  in  the  handling  of  it. 

It  does  involve  a  half  hour,  or  an  hour,  in 
most  days,  when  the  mother  has  occupations 
which  will  let  her  mind  be  given  to  the  child. 
If  she  does  the  family  mending,  this  is  easy. 
If  she  does  it  not,  she  will  probably  have  to 
make  time  to  be  with  the  children.  That  is 
not  difficult,  or  a  great  exaction,  for  she  must 


HOME  TEACHING  IN  BABYHOOD     103 

have  some  way  of  knowing  her  own  children, 
and  the  only  way  to  do  it  is  to  share  their 
occupations,  —  to  do  something  with  them. 
Her  choice  is  between  doing  something  which 
they  suggest,  and  doing  something  which  she 
suggests.  If  she  simply  follows  their  sugges- 
tions, there  is  a  single  gain  of  friendship.  If 
they  do  what  she  suggests,  the  gain  is  double; 
not  only  she  gains  their  friendship,  but  they 
gain  new  interests  and  powers. 

Whether  she  plays  with  them  or  works 
with  them,  she  should  expect  them  to  be 
prompt  and  orderly,  and  to  do  well  whatever 
they  do.  She  should  expect  a  high  standard 
of  performance,  —  high,  that  is,  for  the  child, 
not  high  for  a  grown  person. 

Lest  all  this  should  be  misconstrued  into  a 
plea  for  the  old  rigid  system  of  keeping  chil- 
dren constantly  at  work,  let  the  statement  be 
here  in  words  set  down,  that  children  and 
mothers  both  need  time  to  themselves.  The 
more  children's  play  can  be  without  oversight, 
the  better.  The  more  the  days  in  which  a 
mother  gets  an  hour  without  companions,  the 
better.  But  there  is  more  time  than  one  hour 


104    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

in  each  day,  and  more  things  than  play  in  each 
life.  All  the  permanent  satisfactions  come 
through  work.  We  owe  it  to  the  children  to 
make  work  a  natural  customary  part  of  their 
life,  so  that  a  day  seems  queer  to  them  without 
some  work  in  it. 

Finally,  a  child's  originality  is  helped,  not 
injured,  by  feeding  in  these  ways  upon  the 
ideas  of  others.  Original  thinkers  are  always 
full  of  knowledge.  They  begin  where  others 
have  left  off.  We  all  depend  on  our  fellows 
for  inspiration.  Without  them,  thought  is 
meagre  and  primitive. 


GOOD  READING 

Every-day  acts  are  not  usually  controlled  by 
deliberate,  responsible  convictions.  An  ordi- 
nary man's  ordinary  working  principles  are 
based  on  what  he  conceives  to  be  expedient 
for  himself.  These  conceptions  he  has  been 
accumulating  from  his  innumerable  experi- 
ences ever  since  he  was  a  baby.  He  calls  them 
all  beliefs;  but  they  range  through  personal 
prejudices,  hasty  conclusions,  acquired  prin- 
ciples, and  accepted  conventionalities. 

A  very  few  of  these  he  has  thought  out  for 
himself.  He  can  perhaps  tell  how  he  came 
by  some  few  others.  But  most  of  them  he  has 
always  had;  that  is  to  say,  he  picked  them  up 
in  his  childhood.  These  he  calls  instinctive. 
But,  instinctive  or  acquired  or  accepted,  he 
does  not  have  time  or  inclination  to  examine 
and  compare  them.  He  has  a  host  of  other 
more  interesting  and  important  things  to  do. 
So  his  beliefs  remain  as  they  happen  to  come, 


106    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

and  often  they  are  inconsistent  with  wider 
experience,  as  well  as  mutually  contradictory. 
He  gets  into  trouble  through  them,  without 
knowing  why.  So  it  matters  very  much  what 
impressions  and  experiences  he  accumulates 
in  his  growing  years. 

Because  a  child's  impressions  and  experi- 
ences become  in  this  way  a  part  of  himself 
for  life,  education  continually  concerns  itself 
with  selecting  for  him  such  experiences  as 
will  impress  on  him  the  best  and  most  uni- 
versally true  beliefs.  And  as  books  are  the 
storehouse  of  all  human  experience,  educa- 
tion concerns  itself  heartily  with  the  books 
which  a  child  reads.  And  reading  is,  indeed, 
a  powerful  purveyor  of  impressions.  It  is  a 
process  of  vicarious  experience,  and  to  a  child 
those  experiences  which  his  mind  alone 
shares  are  quite  as  influential  as  what  his 
senses  share  as  well.  Herein  lies  the  reason 
for  carefully  selecting  children's  reading  and 
rigidly  allowing  them  only  the  very  best;  not 
only  the  very  best  as  literature  but  the  very 
best  as  ideas.  A  mother  who  changes  the 
words  of  "Georgie  Porgie"  so  that  he  teases 


GOOD  READING  107 

the  girls  instead  of  kissing  them  is  not  fan- 
tastical. It  is  of  great  practical  importance 
that  the  little  child's  first  associations  with  all 
words  should  be  with  those  words  at  their 
very  best.  Kissing  in  its  best  estate  is  not  a 
thing  to  make  the  girls  cry,  and  with  any  other 
kissing  a  child  should  have  nothing  to  do,  — 
because  with  any  other  he  should  have  no- 
thing to  do  at  any  stage  of  his  life.  He  is  to 
become  the  best  kind  of  a  man  that  he  can, 
and  he  must  be  given  the  best  possible  chance 
to  do  it. 

So,  too,  with  all  ideas  of  cruelty,  vulgarity, 
and  unkindness.  A  little  child  should  hear 
no  hint  of  them,  beyond  what  he  has  to  cure 
in  himself;  because  in  his  own  best  self 
they  should  never  play  a  part.  All  of  a  very 
little  child's  reading  should  be  about  only 
gentle,  brave,  humorous,  and  right  things, even 
to  the  minutest  details;  because  it  is  the  de- 
tails, the  single  words,  that  children  notice 
most.  This  rule  holds,  let  us  say,  up  to  five 
or  six  years  old.  (A  good  way  to  insure  a 
child  against  hearing  the  wrong  kind  of  read- 
ing from  chance  visitors  is  to  mark  the  read- 


108    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

able  parts  of  his  books.  Seldom  mark  things 
for  omission.  They  then  become  food  for 
curiosity.) 

From  five  or  six  years  old  to  eleven  or  twelve, 
this  rigid  exclusion  of  the  disagreeable  is  less 
and  less  necessary.  They  accept  the  facts  in 
a  sense  of  their  own,  for  their  imaginations  are 
still  unchecked,  and  they  know  nothing  of  the 
limitations  of  life.  Romance,  fancy,  fantasy, 
is  their  natural  realm,  and  they  revel  also  in 
all  the  aspects  of  children  and  of  childlike 
life.  But  they  should  catch  nothing  of  the 
binding,  saddening  restrictions  of  later  years. 
Pettiness,  meanness,  or  shallowness  of  tone 
or  substance  are  most  objectionable,  and  all 
the  sordid,  hideous  aspects  of  adult  life  are 
out  of  place  in  a  child's  reading.  Likewise 
a  child  should  be  able  to  see  quite  clearly 
which  of  his  books  and  which  parts  his  parents 
like  best,  which  they  think  trivial. 

From  eleven  to  sixteen  years  the  question 
of  forbidding  special  books  has  to  be  grappled 
with.  Up  to  that  time  it  is  fairly  easy  to  keep 
a  child  so  well  supplied  with  thoroughly 
good  reading   that  he  is  not  eager  to  read 


GOOD  READING  109 

other  things.  After  eleven,  if  he  reads  at  all,  he 
wants  to  read  what  his  companions  are  read- 
ing, and  he  generally  resents  control.  Prob- 
ably it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  book  should  be 
absolutely  forbidden.  Proscription  only  gives 
it  an  exaggerated  importance,  making  it  seem 
to  contain  something  of  especial  interest.  Inci- 
dentally, proscription  puts  an  unfair  tax  upon 
fidelity.  "Trust!"  is  an  even  more  exacting 
command  for  a  boy  than  for  a  dog.  The  dog 
is  not  hampered  by  being  able  to  think. 

Books  undesirable  for  youth  are  of  three 
sorts,  —  the  paltry  books,  the  profound  books, 
and  the  perverted  books,  —  each  just  about 
as  undesirable  as  the  others.  Banalities,  in- 
soluble problems,  and  evil  practices  are 
equally  bad  food  for  a  growing  mind.  To  pre- 
vent a  young  person  from  reading  such  things 
we  must  depend,  first,  upon  a  wholesome 
taste  created  by  all  his  previous  reading  and 
mode  of  life,  which  will  make  him  incurious 
and  easily  disgusted;  second,  upon  his  accu- 
mulated respect  for  our  judgment,  to  make 
him  believe  us  right  when  we  strongly  recom- 
mend  postponement;  third,  upon  a  constant 


110    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

supply  of  equally  interesting  but  more  desir- 
able books. 

In  addition  to  positively  undesirable  read- 
ing (which  varies  according  to  the  child), 
there  is  a  large  mass  of  books  which  are  not 
positively  objectionable,  and  yet  we  cannot 
recommend  them.  They  do  not  amount  to 
much.  The  youngster  should  understand 
very  clearly  the  difference  between  our  recom- 
mending and  our  simply  allowing.  A  book 
which  has  the  sanction  of  our  recommenda- 
tion he  will  read  with  much  more  credence 
than  the  merely  tolerated  book.  Herein  lies 
the  safety  in  letting  a  well-prepared  child  of 
any  age  browse  in  a  library.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  we  are  reading  aloud  to  any  age, 
it  is  well  sometimes  to  skip  passages  which 
we  cannot  personally  countenance.  Finally, 
we  need  never  fear  to  trust  any  one  with 
first-rate  things  which  he  cannot  understand. 
The  fine  spirit  of  them  will  breathe  into  him, 
and  their  power  will' seize  him. 

After  the  age  of  six,  reading  should  not  be 
made  specially  simple  for  him  either  in  words 
or  in  construction,  nor  must  ideas  be  kept 


GOOD  READING  111 

entirely  within  his  comprehension.  Better 
Shakespeare  at  six  than  Miss  Alcott  at  sixteen. 
Sometimes  a  little  fellow  of  ten  or  twelve  is 
kept  on  books  which  are  supposed  to  be  suited 
to  his  age,  when  really  his  intellect  is  much 
beyond  them.  A  child  with  a  strong  taste  for 
reading  should  be  given  the  best  literature 
of  past  generations.  He  should  never  be  kept 
on  books  written  especially  for  children.  On 
them  his  intellect  starves,  and  he  will  show 
signs  of  being  underfed,  —  peevishness,  rest- 
lessness, nervousness,  and  lassitude.  It  is  im- 
portant, too,  that  the  books  he  reads  should 
not  be  all  in  one  style.  He  should  early  be 
accustomed  to  a  great  variety,  and  not  falter 
before  long  sentences  or  long  words,  old- 
fashioned  style,  or  even  dialect. 

Beware  of  emulative  interest.  Beware  for 
the  child  who  listens  because  you  want  him 
to,  or  because  he  thinks  it  is  grown-up  to  like 
grown-up  things.  There  are  the  germs  of 
intellectual  hypocrisy  and  shallow  culture. 
And  do  not  let  him  get  the  habit  of  skipping, 
himself.  Grown  persons  may  skip  in  their 
reading,  because  they  are  able  to  judge  what 


112    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

part  is  worth  reading.  But  for  a  child  the 
habit  of  skipping  is  pernicious.  It  makes 
him  lazy,  inattentive,  and  desultory.  It  takes 
away  all  chance  of  his  becoming  a  discrim- 
inating reader.  There  is  no  need  of  his  read- 
ing many  books,  but  what  he  does  read  he 
should  read  thoroughly. 

Whether  he  should  be  allowed,  before  he 
is  fifteen,  to  read  magazines  and  newspapers 
is  a  question  upon  which  parents  naturally 
differ  very  much.  Undoubtedly  the  best  re- 
sults, intellectually  and  mentally,  are  got  by 
keeping  him  away  from  such  heterogeneous 
masses  of  mixed-up  good  and  poor  stuff,  until 
the  judgment  has  a  firm  standard  of  compar- 
ison. The  material  of  a  newspaper  does  not 
pertain  to  childhood;  the  material  of  maga- 
zines is  of  very  varying  value. 

Whether  Shakespeare  and  most  of  the 
older  writers  are  best  read  in  school  editions, 
each  child's  parents  will  decide  anew.  But 
a  parent  who  gives  the  child  the  full  text 
takes  a  grave  responsibility.  Until  the  nine- 
teenth century  our  civilization  had  not 
reached  a  high  level  of  feeling  about  sex. 


GOOD  READING  113 

Sacredness  was  recognized  in  many  relations 
of  life,  but  not  in  that  one.  So  a  child  who 
reads  those  older  writers  just  as  they  wrote 
gets  a  semi-civilized  idea  about  sex,  ugly  and 
most  inferior  to  the  best  understanding  of  his 
own  generation.  The  comprehension  of  sex 
cannot  be  well  established  before  the  age  of 
sixteen,  seventeen,  or  even  older,  and  just  as 
we  give  a  little  child  only  the  best  ideas  of 
manners  and  morals  until  its  standards  are 
clearly  set,  so  the  idea  of  sex  should  be  kept 
at  its  truest  and  sweetest  until  it  is  well  fixed 
among  the  beautiful  and  sacred  possessions  of 
the  mind.  The  less  the  girls,  especially,  are 
made  vividly  aware  through  their  reading  of 
possible  misuse  of  the  life-giving  power,  the 
more  help  they  are  to  themselves  and  to  the 
boys.  Boys,  older  boys,  must  be  more  aware, 
but  they  should  not  be  over-loaded  in  pro- 
portion to  the  other  contents  of  their  minds. 
It  is  worth  while  to  remember  that  the 
adult  literature  of  one  half-century  becomes 
youthful  literature  in  the  next  fifty  years. 
George  Eliot  was  food  for  mature  minds  in 
18G0.   But  now  her  methods  and  her  wisdom 


114    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

have  become  part  of  our  general  intellectual 
inheritance.  She  does  not  come  as  a  totally 
new  experience  to  this  generation.  In  this 
way,  all  that  is  wholesome  in  the  literature  of 
past  centuries  is  suited  to  young  minds.  What 
is  not  wholesome  no  one  need  ever  read,  ex- 
cept for  historical  interest.  There  is  no  foun- 
dation for  the  fear  that  wide  reading  and  an 
early  knowledge  of  literature  will  injure  origi- 
nality and  take  off  the  bloom  from  enjoyment. 
All  active  original  thinkers  are  wide  readers; 
and  good  literature,  like  good  art,  good  music, 
beautiful  scenery,  and  fine  character,  grows 
more  admirable  the  better  it  is  known. 

There  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  for  mak- 
ing the  reading  of  boys  different  from  that  of 
their  sisters,  and  much  reason  for  making  it 
the  same,  so  that  the  contents  of  each  one's 
mind  shall  be  familiar  and  dear  to  the  other. 
The  best  books  are  all  virile  enough  for  a 
boy  and  warm-hearted  enough  for  a  girl.  Of 
course  there  is  a  kind  of  book  which  is  more 
sure  to  interest  the  average  boy  and  a  kind 
which  is  more  sure  to  interest  girls.  But 
this  is  not  a  basis  for  a  fixed  distinction. 


GOOD  READING  115 

It  is  not  important  that  a  child  should  read 
many  books,  but  it  is  important  that  he  should 
read  first-rate  books;  that  is,  books  which 
are  good  as  literature  and  good  as  thought. 
As  he  grows  older  he  must  read  also  an  in- 
creasing number  of  second-rate  books,  just 
as  his  knowledge  of  what  is  second-rate  in 
every  direction  must  increase.  But  if  a  child 
cares  to  read  at  all,  something  to  suit  his 
taste  at  any  time  can  always  be  found  among 
the  books  that  are  most  excellent.  These  he 
should  never  be  without,  however  little  he 
reads.  He  should  never  be  without  the  pre- 
sent experience  of  what  is  first-rate.  Never 
forget  that  his  reading  is  an  experience,  not  a 
pastime. 


DISCIPLINE 

JL  he  problem  of  discipline  carries  us  out  of 
the  field  of  merely  mental  training  into  the 
undefinable,  irreducible  realm  of  personal 
relations.  Social  consciousness,  a  desire  to  be 
kind  overruling  the  desire  to  follow  one's 
own  impulses,  a  subordination  of  one's  own 
immediate  convenience  to  the  comfort  of  all 
or  to  the  gaining  of  some  distant  good,  a 
realization  of  future  and  past  as  equally  alive 
with  the  present,  a  linking  of  foresight  and 
imagination  with  will  and  love  of  right,  pre- 
ference of  good  behavior  to  bad  behavior,  — 
in  short,  self-government  with  a  moral  pur- 
pose, —  these  create  the  aims  of  discipline ; 
and  to  help  a  child  gain  these  affords  a  prob- 
lem almost  entirely  apart  from  questions  of 
mental  training.  It  is  a  problem  of  how  to 
reach  the  child's  desire,  and  having  reached 
it  how  to  direct  it  toward  the  most  enduring 
things.    Just  as  mental  training  cannot  be  in- 


DISCIPLINE  117 

eluded  in  a  science,  so,  and  much  more,  the 
problems  of  discipline  cannot  be  solved  by  a 
system. 

Discipline  is  the  process  of  regulating  so- 
cial conduct.  If  desire  possessed  in  itself 
judgment,  so  that  it  could  ascertain  for  itself 
which  are  the  most  enduring  things,  then  the 
discipline  problem  would  be  no  problem  at 
all:  all  children  would  be  born  with  a  moral 
sense.  But  desire  is  at  one  end  of  the  child's 
nature,  and  judgment  is  at  the  other.  Desire 
is  his  most  primitive  spiritual  possession,  and 
judgment  is  his  most  civilized.  There  is  no 
natural  cooperation  between  them.  More- 
over judgment  bases  its  decisions  upon  expe- 
rience, and  a  child  has  no  experience,  either 
personal  or  imparted.  His  elders  it  is  who 
must  supply  him  with  selected  experience, 
and  impart  to  him  the  conclusions  of  their 
own  experience  and  of  the  experience  of 
those  who  have  gone  before  them.  So  he 
gets  material  upon  which  to  exercise  his  own 
judgment.  His  desire  can  be  depended  upon 
to  like  best  the  best  thing  which  it  appre- 
hends, but  unaided  by  judgment  it  cannot 


118    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

ascertain  what  is  best.  By  providing  him 
with  significant  experience  and  convincing 
example,  his  elders  can  help  create  in  him  that 
combination  of  desire  with  judgment  which  is 
called  moral  sense.  In  many  children  it  does 
not  need  to  be  created,  it  is  there  eagerly  ready 
to  be  used. 

Unfortunately  for  the  average  child,  the 
elders  often  do  not  know  how  to  reach  his 
desire  or  how  to  appeal  to  his  judgment; 
that  is,  they  do  not  know  how  to  discipline 
him.  In  fact,  trouble  in  managing  a  child  is 
most  often  caused  by  the  stupidity  or  igno- 
rance of  some  grown-up  mentor,  past  or 
present.  It  is  our  incapacity  to  understand 
children  instinctively  that  makes  all  the 
problems  of  discipline.  We  meet  obstacles 
which  we  do  not  understand,  and  then, 
thwarted,  we  clumsily  forget  the  ultimate 
object  of  our  discipline  in  the  confusion  of 
that  moment's  discomfort.  We  are  met  at 
the  outset,  even  in  the  littlest  baby,  by  native 
in  dependence,  by  conservatism,  by  tempera- 
ment mental  and  spiritual,  and  by  change- 
ableness. 


DISCIPLINE  119 

The  first  obstacle,  his  native  independence, 
is  strong  in  every  normal  American.  Perhaps 
the  little  Japanese  are  docile;  our  children  are 
not.  Their  first  instinct  upon  meeting  a 
difficulty  is  resistance.  If  they  fall  in  climb- 
ing a  rock,  they  immediately  go  to  climb  that 
rock  again.  We  admire  and  approve  it  in 
them.  But  when  they  come  up  against  us, 
ourselves,  as  the  difficulty,  we  protest  that 
they  should  not  treat  us  in  the  same  fashion. 
But  what  do  they  know  of  the  reasons  for  our 
demands  ?  What  do  they  know  of  constituted 
authority  ?  A  difficulty  is  to  them  something 
to  be  overcome.  We  owe  them  proof  of  our 
right  to  control,  and  if  not  proof,  then  a 
convincing  persuasiveness  which  shall  be  to 
them  as  good  as  proof.  We  need  not  be  in- 
dignant because  children  will  not  learn  from 
our  experience,  will  not  take  our  word  for 
it  that  this  or  that  is  good  or  bad  for  them. 
They  have  no  reason  whatever  for  believing 
us,  except  such  as  their  very  brief  previous 
experience  of  us  may  have  afforded.  If  in 
that  brief  experience  we  have  told  them  with 
assurance  many  things  which  proved  after- 


120    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

wards  not  to  be  so,  they  certainly  have  no 
cause  to  trust  us.  All  their  own  instincts 
prompt  them  to  make  their  own  experiments. 
Nothing  but  over-ruling  proof  of  the  wisdom 
of  our  advice  will  make  them  care  to  be 
directed  by  us. 

We  ought  to  have  a  child's  affection,  ad- 
miration, and  confidence,  before  we  can  be  of 
full  use  to  him.  His  desire  is  part  and  parcel 
of  his  general  fund  of  feeling  and  goes  with  the 
current  of  his  other  emotions.  What  he  loves, 
admires,  and  trusts,  he  will  desire  to  follow. 
For  with  affection  in  all  primitive  minds 
comes  allegiance;  with  admiration  comes 
imitation;  with  confidence  comes  at  least  a 
measure  of  obedience.  It  is  not  hard  to  win 
him  in  these  ways,  for  he  is  very  inexperienced 
and  uncritical.  Affection  comes  of  itself. 
We  have  only  to  keep  it.  A  child  loves,  out 
of  the  fullness  of  his  heart,  everything  and 
everybody  that  comes  into  his  life  if  he  is  not 
forced  to  fear  them.  With  his  love  goes  his 
admiration.  He  knows  no  difference  between 
these;  what  he  loves  he  admires,  what  he 
admires  he  loves.    He  will  admire  any  sym- 


DISCIPLINE  121 

pathethic  person  who  is  in  power  over  him. 
To  hold  his  affection  safe,  gifts  and  favors 
will  not  serve.  It  asks  sympathy,  not  kind- 
ness. There  must  be  a  mutual  sharing  of 
interests,  his  and  ours.  Then  admiration  will 
remain  if  only  he  sees  that  steadily  as  we  urge 
him  to  good  behavior,  we  try  even  harder  to 
compass  it  in  ourselves.  Confidence,  how- 
ever, requires  in  us  justice  and  good  sense. 
If  in  the  event  we  prove  to  be  usually  right, 
he  will  give  us  his  confidence,  —  his  trust, 
that  is  to  say,  not  his  intimacy. 

Having  his  affection,  admiration,  and  con- 
fidence on  our  side,  we  can  then  count  upon 
numerous  other  allies:  his  natural  love  of 
being  praised,  of  doing  things  the  right  way, 
and  of  seeing  things  come  out  right;  his 
childish  readiness  to  be  interested  and  pleased ; 
and  his  native  capacity  to  see  reason  when  his 
temper  is  cool  and  the  event  remote.  A  great 
help,  too,  is  his  plentiful  lack  of  preconceived 
ideas.  And  we  hold  in  our  own  hands  the 
cogent  power  of  suggestion  and  of  courtesy. 
With  these  numerous  allies,  we  can  over- 
come all  that  is  troublesome  in  his  native 


122     HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

independence.  Independence  itself  is  so  val- 
uable that  we  must  not  even  try  to  conquer 
it.  It  must  be  kept  healthy  and  in  happy  case. 
The  second  obstacle  is  conservatism.  One 
might  also  call  it  mental  inertia.  It  springs 
from  the  human  mind's  incapacity  to  turn 
instantaneously,  and  to  act  immediately,  upon 
unexpected  material.  This  inertia  gives  the 
child  an  instinctive  preference  for  the  familiar 
over  the  strange,  and  enormously  increases 
his  desire  to  do  what  he  is  doing  rather  than 
what  he  is  told  to  do.  Added  to  this  inertia 
is  the  actual  time  that  it  takes  an  inexperienced 
mind  to  translate  heard  words  into  its  own 
thought  and  then  to  translate  that  again  into 
action  to  fit  the  original  words.  Herein  lies 
the  chief  part  of  children's  reluctance  to  obey 
even  a  beloved  mother.  In  grown  people 
this  inertia  often  takes  days,  weeks,  months, 
years  to  overcome.  It  is  an  invaluable  ele- 
ment of  human  nature,  and  needs  only  to  be 
understood  to  be  respected.  It  must  be  met 
with  patience,  courtesy,  and  reasonableness; 
and  its  disadvantages  must  be  obviated  by 
instigations  to  promptness  and  alertness. 


DISCIPLINE  i- 

The  third  obstacle,  personal  temperament, 
has  to  be  overcome  in  each  child  separately. 

Unless  we  study  it  and  adapt  our  treatment 
to  it,  we  shall  remain  remote  from  the  child 
and  shall  give  him  little  help  in  conquering 
his  world.  Not  only  the  same  method  can- 
not be  applied  to  different  children,  but  no 
special  procedure  can  be  held  to  rigidly  with 
any  one  child.  We  must  keep  our  observa- 
tion and  invention  constantly  at  work. 

The  last  obstacle  is  the  comic  element, 
changeableness.  It  is  the  element  of  phases 
and  tricks.  The  child  progresses  through 
innumerable  phases,  mental  and  physical, 
and  he  takes  on  external  tricks  one  after 
another,  which  have  small  relation  to  his 
inner  self.  These  are  all  produced  by  tem- 
porary mental  and  physical  conditions.  We 
must  learn  to  distinguish  between  what  a 
child  will  outgrow,  and  what  he  must  out- 
learn.  We  worry  over  how  to  conquer  a 
child's  temper,  and  suddenly,  one  day,  it 
disappears.  We  are  almost  frantic  because 
a  child  persists  in  holding  its  mouth  open. 
Then  the  trick  vanishes  before  we  have  de- 


124    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

cided  what  to  do  about  it.  We  should  take 
as  little  obvious  notice  as  possible  of  such 
things,  and  recognize  within  ourselves  the 
humor  of  them.  When  their  tendency  or 
immediate  result  is  so  serious  that  we  must 
take  official  notice  of  them,  we  should  still 
never  treat  them  as  on  a  par  in  ethics  with 
really  responsible  faults.  This  obstacle  is 
simply  a  troublesome  manifestation  of  the 
invaluable  power  of  reflex  action. 

In  fine,  whether  the  obstacle  be  independ- 
ence, inertia,  temperament,  or  trick,  we  can 
never  reach  his  desire  and  direct  it  toward  the 
most  enduring  things,  unless  we  respect  in  his 
nature  the  characteristics  which  give  us  most 
trouble.  They  are  obstacles  to  be  provided 
against,  not  obstructions  to  be  destroyed  in 
the  child.  Recognizing  them  by  no  means 
does  away  with  the  necessity  for  discipline; 
it  simply  affects  the  method  of  discipline. 

In  ourselves,  there  are  obstacles  which  we 
seldom  recognize  and  consequently  seldom 
guard  against.  We  do  know  that  we  have 
faults,  and  in  our  dealings  with  a  friend  or 
stranger,  we  try  to  recognize  and  allow  for 


DISCIPLINE  12*5 

them.  In  dealing  with  our  child,  however, 
we  habitually  ignore  them,  and  expect  him 
to  assume  that  what  we  say  and  do  is  right. 
And  we  all  too  often  assume  it  ourselves.  Yet 
we  are  very  like  the  children.  We,  too,  love  ' 
our  own  way.  We,  too,  are  stiff-minded.  We 
have  our  own  unseasonable  moods  and  sense- 
less tricks,  and  moreover,  on  top  of  it  all,  an 
acquired  sense  of  dignity  which  acts  as  a  bar  * 
between  us  and  the  children.  If  we  deserve 
their  respect,  they  will  give  it.  We  need  not 
concern  ourselves  so  much  about  their  be- 
havior toward  us  as  about  our  own  toward 
them.  We  must  treat  them  with  courtesy. 
They  are  our  equals  in  everything  but  ex- 
perience, and  we  must  regard  ourselves  as 
appointed  to  give  them  the  results  of  expe- 
rience quickly,  thoroughly,  and  beneficially, 
often  rigorously,  never  roughly  nor  stupidly. 
This  close  resemblance  between  ourselves 
and  the  children  should  never  be  out  of  mind. 
Children  are  nothing  but  ourselves  in  smaller 
size  and  a  little  different  proportions.  Yet 
we  continually  make  the  mistake  of  thinking 
of  them  as  apart  from  those  of  older  growth. 


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126    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

If  in  speaking  about  their  peculiarities  we 
sometimes  said  "we"  instead  of  "they," 
comprehension  of  them  in  many  ways  would 
open  to  us.  If  we  thought  of  them  as  other 
people  instead  of  as  children,  we  should 
treat  them  more  acceptably.  We  make  the 
same  mistake  with  almost  all  subordinates. 
Persons  whose  power  compels  our  respect, 
we  instinctively  treat  as  we  would  be  treated. 
But  the  further  they  get  from  equal  power, 
the  less  we  treat  them  as  equals  in  humanity. 
It  is  wholesome  to  regard  the  children  in  this 
larger  light  as  members  of  society  like  our- 
selves, for  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  parent, 
no  matter  how  gentle,  sincere,  and  conscien- 
tious, who  is  not  every  day  guilty  of  the  sins 
of  injustice  and  stupidity.  We  are  unjust  be- 
cause we  have  the  immunity  of  tyrants,  and 
we  are  stupid  because  we  are  not  on  our 
guard  against  it.  It  is  the  more  highly  im- 
portant that  we  keep  strict  watch  over  our- 
selves because,  after  all,  the  chief  part  of  a 
child's  moral  training  comes  from  seeing  his 
parents  try  to  do  right. 

Another  way  in  which  it  is  well  to  think  of 


DISCIPLINE  127 

the  child  as  if  he  were  one's  self  is  in  realiz- 
ing his  own  idea  of  his  own  acts.    We  see  his 
acts  in  their  results.    He  sees  them  in  their 
causes.    His  acts  have  not  the    same  mean- 
ing for  him  that  they  have  for  us.    We  can- 
not impress  upon  ourselves  too  carefully  that 
disobedience,  naughtiness,  untruthfulness,  are 
simply  our  names  for  actions  of  the  child. 
They  show  how  the  act  strikes   us.    They 
indicate  our  desire  and  our  outlook;   that  is, 
the  objective  aspect.    If  the  child  were  giv- 
ing names,  he  would  choose  some  word  that 
would  indicate  his  desire  and  his  outlook,  the 
springs  of  action  in  his  own  mind;  that  is,  the 
subjective  aspect,  a  very  different  thing.    We 
say,  quite  truly,  that  some  act  of  his  was  diso- 
bedient to  us.    He  says  that  it  was  agreeable 
to  him.    We  say  it  was  naughty;  he  says  it 
was  funny.   We  say  it  was  untruthful;  he  says 
it  was  necessary  or  perhaps  mistaken.     Or 
his  cause  of  difference  may  be  even  simpler. 
He  may  have  wholly  misinterpreted  a  word 
that  he  used  or  we  used.    The   child   who 
merges  the  two  words  ask  and  fell  will  often 
seem  impertinent  or  unreasonable.     "I  told 


128    HOME,  SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

you  to  pick  up  my  ball,  Grandmother!'5 
means  to  him  "I  asked  you."  In  so  many 
ways  is  his  adjustment  to  the  world  made 
difficult  by  the  very  nature  of  things.  It  is 
our  part  to  simplify,  hasten,  and  perfect  the 
adjustment,  by  discipline. 

It  takes  time  and  careful  thought  from  him 
before  he  can  see  himself  as  others  see  him, 
before  he  can  gain  social  consciousness  and 
learn  to  see  his  acts  objectively.  The  power 
to  picture  one's  self  as  being  a  someone  else  to 
other  people,  as  simply  one  of  a  goodly  com- 
pany just  as  those  others  are  whom  we  can 
see, — this  power  of  imagining  one's  self  from 
the  outside,  —  is  not  natural.  It  is  acquired 
laboriously,  and  in  the  end  is  at  the  very  best 
only  partially  acquired.  We  remain  always  to 
ourselves  intimate  spirits,  with  troublesome, 
half-comprehended  bodies;  whereas  other 
people  are  visible  bodies  with  an  obvious  pro- 
pensity for  crossing  our  path.  The  kindred, 
invisible  spirit  within  them  we  only  slowly 
apprehend.  With  that  apprehension  comes 
the  desire  to  be  kind,  and  the  readiness  to 
subordinate   our   own   convenience.    In   like 


DISCIPLINE  129 

way,  the  present  is  all  we  are  naturally  aware 
of.  Only  slowly  do  we  learn  the  lessons  of  the 
past  and  the  value  of  the  future.  And  only 
with  this  knowledge  comes  the  power  to  have 
foresight.  This  foresight  joining  with  that 
sympathetic  imagination  which  can  conceive 
of  others  as  having  needs  and  rights,  builds 
up  a  preference  for  good  rather  than  bad 
behavior;  and  finally  there  issues  forth  in  us 
self-government  with  a  moral  purpose.  It  is 
to  simplify  and  hasten  these  developments 
that  discipline  exists. 

Sometimes  a  little  child  seems  to  have 
brought  this  social  and  moral  sense  with  him 
into  the  world;  but  even  such  a  rare  child 
comes  unadjusted.  If  he  is  left  unaided,  he 
promptly  adopts  the  easiest  behavior  toward 
his  universe,  and  he  invents  the  most  obvious 
explanations  for  its  treatment  of  him.  If  he 
chances  to  be  the  child  of  a  savage,  he  will  re- 
main in  this  first  simple  state  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  If,  however,  his  surroundings  are 
civilized,  he  will  year  by  year  come  to  adopt 
civilized  methods  and  to  understand  more 
or  less  clearly  their  purpose  and  advisability. 


130    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

He  will  grasp  first  the  simple,  then  the  more 
advanced  methods.  This  process  we  may 
call  following  in  his  development  the  advance 
of  the  race  through  the  ages,  if  we  like  that 
way  of  putting  it.  Perhaps  a  better  way, 
though  less  striking,  is  to  say  that,  since  all 
children  throughout  the  ages  have  come  into 
the  world  in  the  same  wholly  unadjusted  con- 
dition, therefore  no  child  can  avoid  going 
through  the  same  general  process  of  adjust- 
ment that  his  predecessors  followed,  always 
having  to  add  whatever  new  advance  has  been 
made  by  the  adult  generation  immediately 
before  him. 

The  civilized  child,  the  outcome  of  devel- 
oped parents,  is  not,  however,  at  birth  in  the 
exact  condition  of  a  savage  child.  His  mental 
faculties  and  his  capacity  for  mental  reaction 
are  much  more  highly  developed.  And  if  the 
families  from  which  he  springs  are  rising,  he 
is  more  developed  in  this  way  than  his  parents 
were  at  birth.  He  is  a  little  prophecy,  and  in 
potentiality  is  ahead  of  his  times.  He  is  ready 
for  the  next  step  up. 

Practically  what  we  owe  to  a  child,  then, 


DISCIPLINE  131 

is  not  so  much  to  recognize  his  likeness  to  a 
savage  as  to  recognize  his  likeness  to  the 
coming  man.  We  need  to  help  him  from  the 
very  beginning  to  understand  about  managing 
his  environment  in  the  most  advisable  ways 
known  to  the  civilized  world.  The  child  of 
to-day  is  the  man  of  to-morrow  in  two  ways. 
He  will  be  a  man  to-morrow  and  have  to 
carry  the  responsibility  of  to-morrow's  prob- 
lems. And  he  is  to-day  rife  with  the  powers  of 
to-morrow's  man.  He  can  appreciate  to  the 
full  all  the  beneficence  of  discoveries  which 
it  has  taken  the  race  so  long  to  amass.  Little 
children,  for  instance,  enjoy  and  reap  the 
benefit  of  a  tactful,  kind  treatment  of  one 
another  quite  as  much  as  grown  people  do, 
and  they  can  learn  it  very  rapidly  from  sug- 
gestion, though  they  could  not  invent  it  for 
themselves.  Babies  of  six  months  can  begin 
to  learn  self-control.  Boys  of  ten  can  take  a 
quiet  stand  for  decency.  There  is  no  need  to 
wait.  They  can  begin  at  once  to  be  highly 
civilized  ethically,  and  to  be  thankful  for  it. 
Then  having  learned  all  of  good  behavior 
that  the  race  has  to  teach,  they  can  spend 


132    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

their  own  full  manhood  strength  in  discov- 
ering new  nobilities  of  conduct.  So  the  pro- 
phecy of  the  young  life  may  be  fulfilled  and 
its  potentiality  become  a  reality  of  service. 

In  the  light  of  these  considerations,  disci- 
pline becomes  an  effort  to  give  the  child  a  good 
start,  to  give  him  the  best  of  opportunities,  by 
helping  him  to  self-control  and  steady  moral 
judgment ;  and  also  to  make  the  child  agree- 
able to  himself  and  others  as  he  "  goes  along." 

In  brief,  then,  the  problem  of  discipline  is 
triple:  to  reach  the  child's  desire,  to  form 
his  judgment,  and  to  meet  an  immediate 
situation.  In  order  to  reach  his  desire,  we 
must  get  his  good- will.  In  order  to  form  his 
judgment,  we  must  give  him  clear  reasons 
and  make  him  understand  cause  and  effect. 
At  the  same  time,  in  order  to  meet  the  im- 
mediate situation  and  give  him  continuing 
practice  in  self-government  and  consideration 
for  others,  we  must  enforce  good  behavior, 
even  against  his  desire  and  without  his  judg- 
ment if  necessary.  By  right  discipline  he  will 
gain  social  consciousness  even  if  he  does  not 
gain  social  understanding. 


DISCIPLINE  133 

MAXIMS   OF   DISCIPLINE 

Rules  and  maxims,  counsels  and  regula- 
tions, have  but  small  significance  compared 
to  the  experience  which  they  represent.  As 
a  handbook  of  botany  is  to  a  landscape,  so 
must  a  manual  of  morals  be  to  a  life.  Yet 
botany  has  its  service,  and  if  one  were  sure 
that  maxims  would  be  taken  to  enlighten 
rather  than  to  determine  conduct,  to  suggest 
rather  than  to  direct  action,  one  would  not 
find  the  setting  down  of  maxims  so  repugnant. 
At  the  risk  of  misuse,  the  following  are  held 
out,  —  to  be  read,  considered,  and  then  for- 
gotten as  to  all  but  their  spirit. 

UNIVERSAL   RULES    OF    CONDUCT 

A  universal  rule  is  one  which  has 
no  exception  either  from  respect  of 
persons   or  from    consideration    of 
circumstances.     It  is  always  valid. 
There  can  be  only  subjective  reason* 
for  not  follow  J  ii<  i  it. 
1.  Never  be  Annoyed  or  Reproachful. 
Annoyance    and    reproach    betray    a    petty 


134    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

personal  view  of  the  offense  and  give  room 
for  suspicion  that  a  less  selfish  mood  would 
not  have  seen  offense  at  all.  Meet  temper 
or  obstinacy  with  firmness,  not  with  temper. 
Meet  thoughtlessness  with  gravity  and  kind- 
ness. Meet  all  with  decision.  Be  emphatic, 
be  impatient,  be  indignant,  be  peremptory, 
be  angry,  if  occasion  calls;  but  do  not  be 
pettish,  reproachful,  annoyed.  It  is  the  child's 
mistaken  conduct  which  calls  forth  your  pro- 
test, not  his  causing  you  discomfort. 

It  is  a  real  mistake  to  be  always  pleasant 
and  gentle  with  a  child.  Thereby  it  never 
learns  how  others  feel  at  its  misbehavior. 
Neither  is  it  well  to  be  "grieved,"  often. 
This,  like  annoyance,  betrays  a  personal 
point  of  view.  It  is  a  secondary  result  of  their 
naughtiness  only.  Do  not  hesitate  to  behave 
the  way  you  primarily  feel,  on  occasion,  pro- 
vided you  have  rightful  provocation,  and  the 
mood  is  likely  to  reach  the  child. 

2.  Meet  all  Things  with  Latent  Hu- 
mor. Humor  is  the  power  to  see  and  be 
amused  at  the  persistent  contradiction  that 


DISCIPLINE  135 

lies  in  every  situation.  Whenever  two  minds 
join  issue,  there  is  this  comic  element  of  coun- 
ter currents.  Our  own  shortcomings,  our  in- 
capacities and  imbecilities,  are  always  funny. 
One  need  not  laugh  if  it  be  not  suitable,  but 
one  may  always  smile  inwardly. 

3.  Be  in  No  Hurry.  Give  time  for  the 
other  mind  to  receive  your  words,  and,  after 
that,  to  slow  up,  to  stop,  and  then  to  reverse 
its  motion.  Then  give  a  choice  whenever  pos- 
sible. Your  abiding  purpose  is  to  increase  the 
number  of  sensible,  independent  people;  it  is 
not  to  get  your  own  special  plan  fulfilled  in 
this  particular  instance  in  your  own  peculiar 
way. 

4.  Lay  No  Burden  of  Trust.  Trust 
each  one  only  so  far  as  is  serviceable,  not  so 
far  as  seems  possible.  Superfluous  trust  is 
merely  temptation,  and  it  is  unjust  to  lay  such 
a  burden.  Life  swarms  with  temptations.  We 
should  not  unnecessarily  multiply  them  by 
asking  of  a  child  more  self-restraint  than  he 
has  yet  fully  learned.  It  is  fair  to  trust  a 
child  of  ten  not  to  run  away,  but  it  is  not 


136    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

fair  so  to  trust  a  child  of  three.  It  is  not  fair 
to  leave  "yellow  journals"  round  and  then 
tell  a  child  of  any  age  that  you  trust  him  not 
to  read  them.  The  temptation  is  too  strong 
and  constant. 

5.  Set  a  High  Standard  of  Perform- 
ance. The  innermost  desire  of  every  human 
being  is  for  perfection.  What  truly  is  perfec- 
tion, only  judgment  can  show;  but  we  all  love 
perfection  as  we  understand  it;  we  admire 
efficiency,  we  take  pride  in  our  own  accom- 
plishments. This  is  a  universal  possession 
of  the  race;  a  love  of  perfection  lies  down  at 
the  bottom  of  every  one  of  us.  Other  tenden- 
cies may  overlay  and  conceal  it,  such  as  that 
inertia  of  mind  or  body  which  is  called  lazi- 
ness, or  that  deficient  judgment  which  is  called 
a  lack  of  proper  standard.  But  always,  even 
though  dormant,  there  is  the  love  of  perfection, 
ready  to  be  reached  and  used. 

A  high  standard  of  performance  is  a  boon 
to  the  possessor  and  to  his  world.  Inculcate 
promptness,  accuracy,  perfection,  no  matter 
how  far  short   of  this   ideal   the   individual 


DISCIPLINE  137 

will  always  come.  The  world  wants  men  who 
do  their  work  right  the  first  time.  No  matter 
how  much  we  sympathize  with  the  children's 
very  human  wish  for  laxness,  we  must  not  be 
lenient  to  their  disadvantage. 

So  we  must  not  teach  them  to  do  things  the 
easiest  way,  "  to  save  themselves  trouble." 
This  fosters  laziness.  The  line  of  the  least 
resistance  is  the  natural  course  of  mind  as 
well  as  matter.  We  need  not  draw  attention 
to  its  beauties.  Recommend  instead  the  line 
of  greatest  effectiveness. 

6.  Guide,  do  not  Force  the  Mind. 
Guide  or  restrain  the  mind,  but  do  not  thwart 
it.  Remember  the  mind  is  to  be  reached 
and  influenced.  If  you  wish  to  hold  control, 
run  with  it,  in  the  same  direction,  as  a  man 
catches  a  horse.  If  you  run  counter,  there  will 
be  a  collision  of  wills,  and  something  is  sure 
to  be  injured.  It  may  be  the  child's  feelings, 
it  may  be  his  good- will;  and  you  will  be  lucky 
if  you  escape  a  fall  yourself  into  ill  temper 
or  defeat. 


138    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

GENERAL  RULES  OF  CONDUCT 

A  general  rule  is  one  that  is  usually 
valid  but  has  exceptions,  so  that  its 
application  requires  judgment. 

7.  Do  not  Use  Physical  Force.  Re- 
member it  is  the  mind,  not  the  body,  which 
is  to  be  reached  and  influenced.  He  must 
learn  to  govern  his  body  by  his  own  will, 
and  all  independent  children  do  prefer  to 
direct  their  own  steps.  Let  your  motto  be 
"Hands  off."  Illustrate  just  authority  by 
controlling  your  own  actions,  and  then  expect 
the  same  control  of  him. 

8.  Do  not  Punish.  Punishment  is  the 
infliction  of  an  extraneous  arbitrary  pain  of 
body  or  mind,  in  order  to  make  the  offender 
remember  not  to  repeat  the  offense.  Its  result 
is  apt  at  the  best  to  be  an  unreasoning  ac- 
quiescence; at  the  worst,  rebellion  and  hatred 
of  authority.  It  can  never  avoid  being  an  ob- 
trusion between  the  deed  and  the  real  reason 
for  not  doing  it.  Therefore,  if  there  be  any 
other  efficient  way  to  make  the  offender  re- 
member not  to  repeat  the  offense,  avoid  pun- 


DISCIPLINE  189 

ishments.  They  irritate  or  subdue.  Prescribed 
punishments  —  fixed  penalties  —  are  especi- 
ally to  be  avoided,  because  a  child  is  able  to 
reckon  the  cost  of  disobedience  and  decide 
that  the  forbidden  pleasure  is  worth  it.  They 
think,  too,  that  the  punishment  measures  the 
enormity  of  the  offense,  and  that  if  they  do 
not  much  dislike  the  penalty  the  crime  cannot 
be  very  bad.  A  child  should  know  that  dis- 
comfort or  suffering  of  some  sort  is  sure  to 
follow  willful  disobedience,  but  he  should  not 
be  able  to  foresee  exactly  its  kind  or  degree. 

When  master  and  offender  are  both  un- 
reasonable, punishment  is  necessarily  fre- 
quent. The  more  reason  reigns,  the  less  the 
need  for  punishment;  so  that  children  who 
are  brought  up  under  the  rule  of  reason  from 
the  beginning  are  seldom  punished. 

Punishment  is  sometimes  necessary.  It  is 
often  necessary,  for  instance,  in  the  cure  of 
superficial  tricks,  if  the  tricks  are  persistent 
and  need  curing.  Tricks  are  undesirable 
ways  of  doing  things,  which  spring  from 
superficial  reactions  of  various  sorts,  and 
have    no    immediate    connection    with    the 


SIAIEMKMALSOi*^ 

UOS  HflCBUES,  Cflb. 


140    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

personality.  They  are  involuntary,  and  so 
dissociated  from  desire  that  they  cannot  be 
reached  through  the  avenues  of  mind  and 
will.  It  is  for  such  things  that  swift,  sharp 
punishments  are  often  necessary.  But  where 
one  has  always  had  charge  of  the  child,  cor- 
poral punishment  should  not  be  necessary. 
It  is  always  a  makeshift,  a  stop-gap  that  blunts 
the  perceptions  of  both  parent  and  child. 
Disagreeable  tastes  and  various  other  physi- 
cal discomforts  are  sometimes  a  good  sub- 
stitute, when  they  bear  some  relation  to  the 
offense. 

If  one  plan  of  cure  fails  to  work,  try  another. 
No  matter  how  sensible  the  plan  is^or  how 
often  it  has  worked  before,  if  it  does  not  work 
this  time  there  is  something  wrong  with  it  in 
this  case. 

In  lieu  of  punishment,  there  is 

explanation,  which  is  the  appeal  to  reason; 

persuasion,  which  is  the  appeal  to  affection  and  kind- 
ness; 

non-interference,  which  is  the  appeal  to  nature  and  is 
often  excellently  wise;  for  many  acts  left  to  them- 
selves bring  about  immediate  results  which  are  ex- 
ceedingly unpleasant  to  their  perpetrator; 


DISCIPLINE  in 

"  deus-cx-mach  inn  "  which  is  the  supplying  of  pseudo- 
natural  results,  such  as  depriving  him  of  his  dessert  if 
he  dawdles  over  his  meat,  sending  him  out  of  the 
room  if  he  makes  too  much  noise,  etc.; 

hygienic  method,  which  is  the  removal  of  physical 
causes  for  "  naughtiness,"  such  as  putting  him  to  nap 
if  he  is  fretful,  letting  him  run  three  times  round 
the  garden  if  he  is  cross,  opening  the  windows  if 
he  cries  too  much,  etc. 

9.  (a)  Do  not  Demand  Implicit,  Imme- 
diate Obedience  to  New  or  Unexpected 
Demands.  Except  in  matters  of  routine, 
where  by  previous  experience  and  habit  the 
mind  is  already  prepared  to  feel  the  fresh  idea 
is  a  familiar  one,  time  must  be  given  for  ad- 
justment. New  ideas,  unexpected  changes 
of  thought,  cannot  be  acted  upon  suddenly. 
Time  must  be  given  for  translation  of  words 
into  thoughts  and  back  into  action,  with 
all  the  various  intervening  brain  processes. 
Some  minds  are  very  slow  in  such  adjust- 
ment; some,  very  quick,  but  none  is  in- 
stantaneous. 

It  is  also  well  to  lead  the  mind  to  the  new 
idea  slowly,  beginning  with  what  is  familiar 
and  acceptable  and  then   linking  each  new 


142      HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

idea  to  one  which  has  already  been  made 
familiar.  For  instance,  Jack  who  is  all  ready 
to  go  on  a  delightful  walk  must  be  kept  at 
home  because  an  unknown  cousin  has  come 
to  see  the  family.  "Wait,"  says  the  mother, 
"do  you  know  who  has  come?  It  is  a  very 
nice  cousin  that  you  have  never  seen.  He 
lives  out  where  the  cow-boys  are.  So  if  you 
put  off  your  walk,  you  will  hear  all  about  it." 
This,  instead  of  the  curt  information,  "You 
can't  go  out.  A  strange  cousin  has  come. 
Take  off  your  things."  Some  people  object 
that  this  makes  obedience  too  easy  and  plea- 
sant. A  child  they  think  should  obey  cheer- 
fully, without  asking  for  reasons.  But  that 
is  a  virtue  which  he  will  never  need  when  he 
is  grown.  Grown  people  are  almost  never 
called  upon  to  change  their  course  suddenly 
without  any  understanding  of  the  reasons. 
We  first  understand  and  then  act,  —  much 
against  our  will  and  desire,  it  may  be,  but 
always  for  comprehensible  cause.  Children 
must  give  prompt  obedience  if  necessary,  but 
there  is  no  need  of  multiplying  these  uncom- 
fortable occasions.    How  uncomfortable  they 


DISCIPLINE  143 

are  any  one  knows  who  has  set  out  for  a 
day's  pleasure  and  found  at  the  pier  that  the 
boat  has  stopped  running! 

(b)  Demand  Immediate,  Implicit  Obe- 
dience in  Customary  Matters.  Every  one 
knows  how  hard  it  is  to  accept  reversals 
pleasantly.  So  a  habit  of  cheerful  obedience 
in  youth  is  necessary  in  order  that  one  may 
learn  how  to  yield  gracefully  and  easily  when 
one  cannot  have  one's  own  way.  It  is  also 
necessary  in  order  that  the  ordinary  course  of 
life  may  proceed  promptly  and  comfortably 
and  in  order  that  sudden  emergencies  may 
find  the  child  entirely  subservient  to  quick 
directions.  In  obedience  also  lie  the  founda- 
tions of  faith. 

This  rule  cannot  be  enforced  very  early. 
To  a  child  under  three,  all  demands  are  new, 
unexpected,  and  unaccustomed.  In  cases  of 
emergency  he  has  to  be  taken  up  bodily. 
Neither  should  the  rule  be  enforced  late.  In  a 
child  over  thirteen,  unselfishness  and  reason- 
ableness should  have  taken  the  place  of 
obedience.  A  request  or  a  representation 
should  be  all  that  is  necessary. 


144     HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

10.  Do  not  Explain  or  Persuade  at  the 
Time.  Explain  before  the  moment  of  com- 
mand or  after  the  incident  is  closed,  not  in 
medias  res,  while  disobedience  and  rebellion 
are  regnant  in  the  other  mind.  Reason  when 
he  is  a  reasonable  being,  unbiased  by  the  vivid 
pressure  of  passing  desire. 

Persuade  before  a  command.  If  persua- 
sion follows  a  command,  it  usually  betrays 
weakness  and  is  consequently  apt  to  meet 
refusal;  certainly  it  will  breed  disrespect. 

Therefore,  command  but  seldom  and  mostly 
in  matters  of  course.  When  you  command 
exact  obedience. 

11.  Say  "Do,"  not  "Don't."  "Don't" 
simply  stops  action.  It  suggests  no  counter 
action.  "Don't  run  your  head  forward!" 
offers  no  aim  to  be  accomplished.  "Do  draw 
your  chin  in,"  offers  an  ideal  to  be  pursued. 
This  follows  the  general  principle  that  the 
excellent,  not  the  execrable,  is  suitable  ma- 
terial with  which  to  stock  the  mind;  that  hy- 
giene, not  pathology,  is  fit  for  general  study; 
that  it  is  purposes  to  be  pursued,  not  fates  to 
be  shunned,  that  urge  us  to  good  behavior. 


DISCIPLINE  145 

12.  Do  not  Present  the  Alternative. 
When  one  course  of  action  is  entirely  the 
most  desirable  and  the  child  is  not  able  to 
see  the  full  grounds  of  choice,  do  not  give  him 
a  choice.  Let  the  choice  be  between  two  ways 
of  doing  the  one  necessary  thing.  For  in- 
stance, 'We  are  going  home  now."  "No,  I 
don't  want  to  go  home."  "I  know  it.  I  am 
sorry,  but  we  must  go.  You  would  like  to 
stay,  I  know.  Shall  we  go  past  Charlie's 
house  or  round  by  the  blacksmith's  shop?" 

Nevertheless,  in  all  matters  which  come 
within  the  range  of  his  entire  understanding, 
a  child  should  be  allowed  and  encouraged  to 
use  his  own  judgment  and  to  act  on  his  own 
initiative.  Though  his  intellect  does  not 
reach  full  development  till  many  years  later, 
he  has  a  meagre  supply  of  it  which  is  fully 
adequate  to  the  demand  of  his  legitimate 
amount  of  responsibility. 

13.  Do  not  Argue.  Explain  or  persuade, 
but  do  not  argue.  Argument  is  for  conversion, 
not  for  action. 

14.  Learn  to  be  Silent.  There  is  much 
power  in  silence.    When  the  child  knows  that 


146    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

you  are  displeased,  and  why,  then  there  is  no 
increased  power  in  words.  So  long  as  you 
talk,  he  can  talk  back. 

15.  Do  not  Snub.  Snubbing  paralyzes 
the  mental  forces  and  checks  the  flow  of  natural 
feeling  on  both  sides.  It  is  most  injurious  to 
healthy  development. 

16.  Do  not  Nag.  Nagging  numbs  the 
mental  sensibilities.  It  makes  the  receipt  of 
reproach  familiar,  and  the  child  becomes  either 
indifferent  or  discouraged. 

17.  Do  not  Appeal  to  Base  Motives. 
The  base  motives  are  fear,  vanity,  jealousy, 
selfishness,  laziness,  and  their  congenial  fel- 
lows. An  appeal  to  fear  encourages  weakness ; 
an  appeal  to  vanity  fosters  conceit;  and  so 
through  the  list.  These  baser  motives  are 
operative  and  very  potent  in  us  all;  but  the 
more  they  are  ignored  the  nobler  the  race  will 
become. 

18.  Do  not  Bribe  or  Threaten.  State 
the  resulting  benefit  of  acquiescence  or  the 
resulting  pain  of  refusal,  if  necessary,  but  do 
not  offer  extraneous  arbitrary  goods  or  ills  as 
a  sequence  of  any  conduct.    Bribes  appeal  to 


DISCIPLINE  147 

the  base  motive  of  greed,  the  desire  to  get 
something  more  than  one's  due.  Threats  ap- 
peal to  the  base  motive  of  fear,  the  desire  to 
avoid  what  is  unpleasant,  and  the  impulse  to 
reckon  the  cost. 

19.  Do  not  Reward.  A  reward  is  some 
desired  good  following  as  an  artificial  sequence 
but  not  as  a  consequence  upon  right  conduct. 
Thus  rewards  must  always  be  an  obtrusion 
between  the  deed  and  the  real  reason  for  doing 
it.  Therefore,  if  the  real  reason  can  possibly 
be  made  apparent  and  attractive  to  the  child, 
let  that  suffice  instead  of  a  reward.  If  not,  let 
the  gratification  of  those  who  do  understand 
be  sufficient  to  please  him.  A  habit  of  expect- 
ing artificial  rewards  clouds  the  purposes  and 
misleads  the  will  of  a  child. 

The  more  reason  reigns,  the  less  need  is 
there  for  rewards. 

Rewards  are  perhaps  sometimes  necessary 
to  overcome  a  persistent  trick  or  habit,  such 
as  slowness,  absent-mindedness,  or  the  like. 
But  a  child  who  from  the  beginning  sees  great 
pride  taken  in  good  performance,  seldom 
needs  any  other  spur  than  his  own  proud 


148    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

satisfaction  and  the  commendation  of  those 
whose  commendation  he  values,  —  in  addi- 
tion to  the  good  of  the  gain  itself. 

COUNSELS    OF   PERFECTION 

20.  Avoid  Lies.  (a)  Avoid  lies  from 
yourself.  The  only  excusable  excuse  for  lying 
is  defenselessness :  we  may  sometimes  believe 
that  we  are  driven  into  lying  to  those  who 
have  the  better  of  us.  But  lying  to  subor- 
dinates has  no  excuse;  it  is  we  who  have 
the  better  of  them:  they  are  already  in  our 
power.  Some  persons  say  that  they  never  lie 
except  to  children.  By  this  they  mean,  of 
course,  that  they  imagine  a  lie  to  a  child  is 
sometimes  defensible  because  it  seems  neces- 
sary. But  this  is  a  policy  which  arises  from 
timidity  rather  than  wisdom.  There  is  always 
some  way  of  telling  the  truth  which  is  fitted  to 
the  child.  Anything,  little  or  big,  which  gives 
to  any  human  creature  a  mistaken  idea  about 
anything  in  the  universe  is  an  injury  to  him. 
The  more  accurate  his  ideas  of  things,  the 
more  fully  and  wisely  he  can  live  his  life. 
Moreover,  since  we  are  very  particular  that 


DISCIPLINE  149 

children  shall  tell  the  truth  to  us,  and  since 
we  find  it  exceedingly  inconvenient  and  exas- 
perating if  they  do  not,  it  is  as  well  to  show 
them  by  our  own  example  what  we  mean  by 
always  telling  the  truth. 

(b)  Furthermore,  do  not  tempt  the  child 
to  lie  by  asking  direct  questions  in  difficult 
situations,  or  by  showing  anger,  indignation,  or 
amazement  over  his  faults. 

Do  not  give  him  the  lie,  by  hasty  contra- 
diction or  by  deliberate  unbelief.  A  child's 
mind  is  even  less  clear  than  a  grown  person's, 
and  he  often  does  not  know  that  he  has  not 
told  the  truth.  Sometimes  he  is  telling  the 
truth  according  to  his  idea  of  the  meaning  of 
your  words  or  of  his.  Be  patient  and  search 
carefully.  Remember  that  in  the  matter  of 
truth-telling,  though  the  will  be  willing  the 
mind  is  often  weak.  The  natural,  untrained 
mind  cannot  always  distinguish  between 
thought  and  reality.  The  natural  mind  be- 
lieves whatever  it  thinks ;  and  believes  that 
saying  a  thing  is  so,  is  the  same  as  its  being 
so.  Help  the  child  to  learn  to  see  the  truth,  to 
distinguish  between  thoughts  or  wishes  and 


150    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND   VACATION 

facts.  Above  all,  do  not  confuse  his  mind 
by  frightening  him  about  it  all.  Never 
frighten  him,  and  always  help  him  to  un- 
derstand what  is  the  true  answer  and  how 
earnestly  you  wish  to  have  him  find  it. 
Teach  him  that  the  truth  is  more  important 
and  sacred  than  any  possible  personal  con- 
sideration. 

21.  Discourage  Superfluous  Habits. 
We  are  all  insufficiently  adaptable  to  cir- 
cumstances. We  need  to  distinguish  more 
clearly  and  readily  between  necessary  and 
merely  convenient  or  accidental  customs.  So  it 
is  undesirable  to  multiply  the  number  of  things 
which  seem  necessary  to  a  child.  Whenever 
you  possibly  can,  tell  him  it  does  not  matter 
which  way  he  does  this  or  that.  Let  him 
realize  that  there  are  often  a  dozen  equally 
good  ways.  Discourage  his  always  putting 
on  the  right  boot  first,  always  taking  his 
spoon  in  his  right  hand,  always  being  sung 
to  at  night.  Mere  conveniences  and  pleasures 
must  not  be  petrified  into  duties  and  neces- 
sities. To  make  a  general  rule  into  a  uni- 
versal rule,  stiffens  us. 


DISCIPLINE  151 

22.  Teach  Him  to  Bear  Disappointment. 
Many  persons  conceal  coining  events  from 
children,  because  the  things  may  after  all 
not  happen  and  then  disappointment  is  so 
hard  to  bear.  Of  course,  if  disappointment 
is  thus  treated  as  an  experience  to  be  avoided 
in  every  possible  way,  then  disappointment  will 
become  an  unbearable  pain.  But  life  is  a  series 
of  disappointments,  as  it  is  a  series  of  fulfill- 
ments and  a  series  of  surprises.  Children  should 
learn  to  meet  disappointment  as  one  of  the  in- 
teresting problems.  They  should  grow  accus- 
tomed to  turn  defeat  to  victory  by  filling  every 
disheartening  gap  with  something  which 
could  not  otherwise  have  been  had.  If  one 
is  left  at  a  junction  by  a  delayed  train,  let  him 
visit  the  sights  of  the  town,  or  talk  with  a  na- 
tive, or  write  an  unusual  letter, — instead  of  eat- 
ing apples  of  annoyance  in  the  waiting-room. 

23.  Aim  to  have  the  Child  Self-aware 
but  not  Self-conscious.  Let  your  com- 
ments on  his  conduct  be  enlightening.  Make 
the  general  situation  clear,  but  do  not  focus 
his  attention  on  a  detached  characteristic. 
What  we  commonly  call  self-consciousness  is 


152    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

an  exaggerated  consciousness  of  some  part  or 
aspect  of  ourselves.  In  order  to  lose  self-con- 
sciousness, we  must  see  ourselves  in  the  large 
and  as  one  of  many  who  have  a  common  na- 
ture. We  must  become  less  conscious  of  our- 
selves as  separate  individuals  and  more  aware 
of  ourselves  as  companions.  Thus  we  become 
less  self-conscious,  although  we  become  more 
self-aware.  Accustom  the  child,  by  appeals  to 
his  sympathetic  imagination,  to  realize  himself 
as  having  an  outward  external  existence,  which 
is  visible  to  other  people  as  they  are  visible  to 
him,  and  which  gives  them  their  only  know- 
ledge of  him.  Accustom  him  to  realize  that 
other  people  have  an  inner  invisible  source  of 
action  entirely  apart  from  him,  as  his  is  apart 
from  them  and  invisible  to  them.  So  create 
a  spontaneous  understanding  of  the  need  for 
kindness  in  order  to  understand  others,  and 
for  self-expression,  in  order  that  others  may 
understand  him. 

Enlarge  in  all  other  ways,  also,  his  rela- 
tions with  the  world.  Accustom  him  to  realize 
the  future  and  to  remember  his  past,  and  then 
to  realize  the  distant  past.    This  gives  him  a 


discipline:  15s 

larger  basis  from  which  to  judge  himself  and 

other  people,  and  by  which  to  test  all  now  and 
old  ideas  of  conduct. 

2  t.  Avoid  Competition  and  Comparison. 
Forced  competition  leads  invariably  to  dis- 
couragement in  those  who  must  invariably 
come  out  behind,  and  to  conceit  in  those  who 
just  as  inevitably  come  out  ahead.  Th<> 
winners  are  always  those  who  have  native 
talent.  They  deserve  no  credit  for  distancing 
the  others  who  work  with  acquired  powers, 
yet  they  get  all  the  praise  which  really  belongs 
to  some  one  who  made  a  great  effort  working 
against  large  odds.  Competition  is  whole- 
some only  in  secondary  things  and  between 
those  who  are  evenly  matched  in  talent. 

Comparisons  between  things  and  persons 
lead  to  various  evils.  "Which  do  you  like 
better,  candy  or  ice  cream?"  is  a  most  usual 
sort  of  question.  But  it  is  really  excessively 
silly.  "Both"  is  the  only  rational  answer. 
To  ask  such  baseless  questions  of  the  inex- 
perienced only  gives  them  a  belief  that  su- 
periority and  inferiority,  a  grading  of  some 
sort,  must  exist  in  all  sorts  of  places  where 


154    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

there  is  really  no  ground  of  choice  at  all.  It 
leads  them  to  suppose  that  one  quality  is 
better  to  possess  than  another.  The  conse- 
quence is  that  we  all  bring  up  with  us  into 
adult  life  an  impression,  indefensible  but 
ineradicable,  that  there  is  a  better  and  a 
worse  in  everything.  We  are  stuffed  with 
groundless  prepossessions  and  prejudices. 

25.  Avoid  Criticism,  (a)  Avoid  criticism 
of  others  in  the  child's  hearing.  He  is  entirely 
incapable  of  judging  character,  its  causes  and 
excuses.  He  is,  and  ought  to  be,  uncompro- 
mising, intolerant,  wholly  external  in  his 
standards.  Good  is  good  and  bad  is  bad  for 
him.  The  shortcomings  and  peculiarities  of 
his  older  friends  and  relatives  and  neighbors 
are  none  of  his  business.  The  best  of  them 
are  to  be  loved  by  him  and  admired.  This 
sort  of  hero  worship  is  essential  to  forming 
his  ideals.  He  must  have  tangible,  visible  em- 
bodiments of  virtue  to  solidify  his  ideas  upon. 
Only  later  can  he  learn  the  meaning  of  arche- 
type. 

(b)  Avoid  criticism  of  the  child  in  the  child's 
hearing.    Unless  you  deliberately  intend  it  to 


DISCIPLINE  155 

serve  some  definite  good  for  him,  do  not  lei 
him  hear  from  you  any  remarks  aboul  his 

character,  his  talents,  his  faults,  his  appear- 
ance, or  his  health.  Leave  him  the  blessed 
immunity  of  unconsciousness,  and  the  whole- 
someness  of  untroubled  growth  toward  un- 
perplexed  ideals. 

(c)  Avoid  criticism  of  the  world  in  general 
in  the  child's  hearing.  Do  not  talk  before  him 
of  sickness,  accident,  crime,  private  affairs, 
adult  perplexities,  of  any  sort.  The  reason 
for  this  is  substantially  the  same  as  for  (a). 

26.  Keep  Pace  with  the  Child's  Mind. 
Every  child  rapidly  outgrows,  or  ought  rap- 
idly to  outgrow,  his  previous  mental  states 
and  his  previous  occupations.  He  needs  to 
be  freshly  noticed,  and  not  to  be  treated  as  if 
he  were  still  in  last  month's  state  of  mind. 
As  new  power  develops  in  him  and  new  ex- 
perience broadens  him  he  sees  himself  dif- 
ferently, and  needs  to  have  others  see  him 
differently,  too. 

Also  all  children  need  full  occupation.  As 
well-used  powers  grow  stronger,  they  can  be 
used  more  rapidly  and  less  frequently.   There 


156    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

is  room  for  new  acquisition.  The  child  who 
constantly  asks  "What  shall  I  do?"  or  who 
is  constantly  without  occupation,  is  he  whose 
available  occupations  have  become  too  easy  for 
him,  and  who  is  not  bred  by  experience  into 
the  knowledge  that  there  is  surpassing  interest 
in  doing  what  is  creative  and  a  little  difficult. 

27.  Ignore  Much.  Beware  of  over-em- 
phasizing little  faults  and  little  duties.  Often 
by  over-emphasis,  so  much  attention  is  centred 
upon  a  fault  that  it  is  intensified,  —  as  a  bi- 
cyclist increases  his  chances  of  running  into 
something  by  thinking  nervously  about  it. 
Likewise,  little  duties,  desirable  habits,  are 
readily  magnified  into  moral  obligations  by  a 
learner,  as  the  early  Jews  made  a  religion  of 
their  health  regulations.  One  often  sees  a  fine 
young  girl  who  believes  a  courteous  note  to 
be  more  important  than  a  truthful  tongue. 
Human  nature  has  a  tendency  to  make  each 
injunction  moral,  and  to  give  most  weight  to 
those  it  hears  most  often! 

28.  Practice  Much;  Preach  Little. 
Words  rapidly  become  cant  to  the  hearer, 
even  if  they  remain  sincere  in  the  speaker. 


DISCIPLINE  157 

Ideals  which  one  discovers  for  one's  self 
arise  in  the  intellect  and  thence  permeate 
one's  whole  nature.  Ideals  received  in  words 
from  another  may  never  get  further  than 
the  memory.  Say  little  of  your  ideals  to  a 
child,  and  that  most  soberly  and  reverently. 
Let  him  see  clearly  that  you  know  that  it  is 
only  deeds  which  prove  sincerity.  Prove  your 
principles  by  your  practice,  not  by  your  in- 
sistent desire  that  he  shall  practice  them. 
Then  when  he  discovers  for  himself  what 
they  are,  they  will  be  very  convincing  to  him; 
the  more  that  as  a  child  he  could  not  under- 
stand abstractions. 

29.  Do  not  Stand  on  your  Dignity. 
It  is  salutary  to  carry  with  you  always  the 
supposition  that  you  are  possibly  in  the 
wrong.  Then,  when  you  prove  to  be  actually 
in  the  wrong,  you  easily  take  the  frank  stand 
so  provocative  of  confidence,  and  freely  ac- 
knowledge your  mistake.  Apologies  are  right 
and  useful  to  make,  even  to  little  children. 
(Excuses  are  another  thing.  The  man  who 
is  full  of  excuses  is  generally  not  full  of  re- 
pentance.) 


158    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

30.  Bear  no  Malice.  Do  not  visit  your 
displeasure  at  one  piece  of  conduct  upon  all 
else  that  he  does,  for  a  day  or  a  week.  Do 
not  seem  to  be  sulkily  harboring  a  grudge  as 
if  he  had  done  it  to  injure  you  and  you  were 
angry.  Treat  each  error  on  its  own  merits, 
and  let  him  see  that  you  regard  him  as  of 
more  importance  than  any  one  of  his  deeds. 

31.  Use  your  Best  Mood.  Try  not  to 
discipline  a  child  unless  you  are  satisfied  with 
your  mood.  First  summon  your  own  best 
state  of  mind,  and  then  face  the  child.  Your 
mood  will  be  your  best  ally. 

In  the  same  spirit,  if  he  confesses  to  some 
misdeed,  do  not  treat  him  just  as  if  you  had 
found  out  the  wrong  yourself.  A  confession 
is  a  sign  of  repentance.  It  may  be  selfish 
repentance,  a  mere  desire  to  avoid  the  un- 
comfortable consequences  of  his  misdeed. 
It  may  be  generous  repentance,  a  strong  wish 
that  he  might  undo  the  harm  which  he  has 
done.  In  any  case  he  needs  to  be  handled 
in  accordance  with  his  state  of  mind.  Non- 
repentance,  selfish  repentance,  and  generous 
repentance  present  three  different  problems; 


DISCIPLINE 


159 


for  discipline  is  not  mere  policing,  the  pro- 
tection of  public  interests;  it  aims  at  personal 
assistance. 


1.  Annoyance 

2.  Humor 

3.  Hurry 


OUTLINE 

UNIVERSAL   RULES 

4.  Trust 

5.  High  Standard 

6.  Guidance 


GENERAL   RULES 


7.  Force 

8.  Punishment 

9.  Obedience 

10.  Explanation 
and  Persuasion 

11.  Forbidding 

12.  Choice 


Argument 


13. 

14.  Silence 

15.  Snubbing 

16.  Nagging 

17.  Motives 

18.  Bribes  and  Threats 

19.  Rewards 


20.  Lying 

21.  Habits 

22.  Disappointment 

23.  Self-eonsciousness 

24.  Competition  and  Com 
pari  son 

25.  Criticism 


COUNSELS   OF   PERFECTION 

20.  Keeping  Pace 


27.  Ignoring 

28.  Practice  and  Preaching 

29.  Dignity 

30.  Bearing  Malice 

31.  Best  Mood 


AMUSEMENTS 

The  present  well  -  recognized  increase  in 
nervous  diseases  indicates  that  we  of  these 
latest  times  are  making  some  serious  new 
mistakes  in  our  way  of  life,  that  with  all 
of  our  improvements  through  knowledge  of 
bacteriology  and  hygiene,  we  are  heedless  of 
some  essentials  to  steady  health  and  rational 
life;  we  are  habitually  going  counter  to  some 
necessities  to  full  development.  And  this  is 
true  of  all  classes  in  the  community.  The 
increased  tendency  to  neuritis,  nervous  pros- 
tration, and  their  fellows,  heart-disease  and 
insanity,  is  not  confined  to  the  rich  or  the 
idle,  to  the  day's  worker  or  the  farmer's  wife. 
Every  community  and  occupation  is  attacked 
by  it,  but  chiefly  the  dwellers  in  and  near 
cities,  who  overwork  their  nerves  and  heart, 
and  overtax  their  brains.  Even  the  children 
show  the  strain. 

Before  rapid   transit   was   possible,   when 


AMUSEMENTS  1G> 

horses  trotted  "two-forty"  and  letters  went 
not  more  than  fifty  miles  a  day;  before  mul- 
tiplicity was  thrust  upon  us;  when  newspapers 
had  four  pages  and  big  eities  held  only  one 
hundred  thousand  people,  then  the  powers  of 
civilized  man  were  sufficient  to  meet  the  suc- 
cession of  events  that  came  before  him,  and 
lie  could  choose  wisely  without  needing  much 
wisdom.  His  brain  was  adequate  to  his  civili- 
zation, his  nervous  system  was  adjusted  to  it, 
and  the  muscles  of  his  heart  were  equal  to  the 
demand  that  his  mental  activity  made  upon 
them.  The  life  of  children  was  easily  and 
naturally  uneventful.  But  our  modern  con- 
ditions supply  perpetually  perplexing  and 
conflicting  demands  upon  our  time  and  atten- 
tion, our  sympathy  and  our  imagination. 

Many  modern  appliances,  like  the  automobile  and 
telephone,  are  so  elaborate  that  their  use  demands 
close,  steady,  anxious  attention.  Most  of  them  release 
us  from  one  or  another  natural  necessity  and  from  the 
restriction  of  natural  conditions.  The  railroad  train 
releases  as  totally  from  the  natural  necessity  of  staying 
within  walking  distance  of  home;  the  newspaper  re- 
leases us  from  the  natural  condition  of  knowing  and 
caring  little  about  distant  persons  and  events.    Large 


162    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

cities  bring  forty  delightful  acquaintances  to  our  doors 
where  one  called  upon  our  grandmothers;  the  mail- 
order department  stores  make  it  possible  for  the 
farmer's  wife  to  procure  any  one  of  twenty  different 
kinds  of  churns.  With  all  this  has  come  a  new  desire 
for  beauty  and  brightness,  pleasure  and  variety,  born 
of  the  new  opportunity  in  increased  possessions  and 
decreased  drudgery.  There  is  an  eagerness  for  varied 
experiences  and  personal  enlargement,  for  raciness  and 
movement  in  life.  The  bewilderment  of  outward 
things,  pleasing,  complete,  and  desirable,  has  blurred 
our  inner  vision,  and  we  lose  sight  of  the  real  in  the 
glare  of  the  visible.  A  multitude  of  charms  besets  us 
and  our  children. 

The  strain  is  growing  to  be  more  than  the 
human  constitution  can  bear.  If  the  modern 
parent  accepts  for  himself  all  that  comes,  he 
breaks  down;  if  he  sets  no  careful  bounds  for 
his  children,  the  strain  on  them  inevitably 
cripples  their  present  and  future  health,  hap- 
piness, and  usefulness.  He  has  to  be  perpet- 
ually making  choice  among  the  perplexing 
claims  of  conflicting  opportunities.  He  is 
thus  thrown  upon  the  continual  need  of  wis- 
dom. If  he  has  no  wise  basis  of  choice,  chaos 
in  act  and  mind  is  the  result,  and  nerve 
weakness  in  the  rising  generation. 


AMUSEMENTS  1G3 

Just  principles  of  choice  are  essential  to 
steady  health  and  rational  life;  they  are  neces- 
sities to  full  development.  It  is  of  such  prin- 
ciples that  we  are  heedless  in  our  generation. 
Many  of  us  do  not  know  what  they  are,  so 
that  we  innocently  imagine  that  whatever  is 
good  is  good  for  us,  and  do  not  even  try  to 
strike  a  balance  between  our  powers  and  our 
efforts.  We  ask  for  no  equality  between  our 
capacities  and  our  ambitions,  we  establish 
no  proportion  between  time  and  occupation, 
between  attentive  power  and  things  to  be 
interested  in,  for  we  understand  neither 
elimination  nor  balance.  In  fine,  we  do  not 
know  how  to  make  a  wise  choice.  We  have  no 
recognized  principles  in  such  matters. 

This  lack  of  principle  is  the  fundamental 
obstacle  to  proper  regulation  of  ourselves  and 
our  children  in  the  matter  of  occupations  and 
amusements.  We  dislike  the  very  idea  of 
rules  and  regulations.  Too  many  of  us  have, 
consequently,  daughters  who  agree  with  the 
girl  of  fifteen  who  declared  she  "wouldn't 
have  a  mother  who  would  n't  let  her  go  to 
things." 


164    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

This  dislike  is  characteristically  American. 
The  idea  that  all  men  are  born  equal  has 
brought  with  it  naturally  the  uneasy  suspicion 
that  no  one  man  should  control  another.  We 
are  chary  of  talking  of  obedience;  we  avoid 
the  words  "master"  and  "servant."  In  this 
light,  children  seem  to  possess  the  personal 
right  to  choose  their  own  pleasures  and  follow 
their  own  inclinations,  being  persons  quite 
as  truly  as  grown  people  are  persons.  So 
there  has  come  about  among  respectable 
parents  a  curious  irresponsibility  toward  the 
management  of  their  children.  Such  parents 
seem  to  have  learned  little  by  experience,  and 
they  distrust  and  dislike  the  self-controlled 
practices  of  those  who  have  learned  from  the 
experience  of  the  race.  In  their  American 
faith  that  there  is  always  something  better 
than  what  we  now  experience,  they  have 
thrown  over  conservatism  in  conduct,  and 
seek  to  choose  the  ways  of  life  afresh  for  them- 
selves and  their  children.  They  find  the  cus- 
toms and  conventions  of  our  forerunners 
clumsy  and  ill-fitted  to  the  present  time. 
They  prefer  a  greater  freedom  of  choice,  but 


AMUSEMENTS  1G5 

they  have  not  that  judgment  which  is  neces- 
sary to  wise  choice,  that  power  to  weigh 
values  and  to  see  large  issues  and  future  con- 
sequences. The  result  is  that  they  practically 
give  up  the  management  of  their  children, 
leaving  them  almost  without  regulation. 

How  necessary  is  judgment  to  conquering  new  con- 
ditions, and  how  essential  is  regulation,  may  be  seen  on 
a  large  scale  in  our  American  railroad  management. 
Our  railroads  are  nine  times  as  dangerous  to  trainmen 
and  twelve  times  as  dangerous  to  passengers,  as  Eng- 
lish railroads  are.    An  authority  writing  very  recently 
says  that  officials  "  watch  the  trainmen  to  see  if  their 
shoes  are  blacked  and  their  faces  shaved,"  but  that  no 
adequate  measures  are  taken  to  see  whether  men  are 
not  daily  disobeying  some  vital  rule  for  the  safety  of 
passengers.   After  discussing  the  slight  advantage  that 
safety  appliances  can  give  without  faithful  operators, 
he  says.  "  We  are  thrown  back  upon  the  hope  of  better 
discipline  and  a  more  highly  developed  morale  among 
the  employees.    Who  is  at  fault  for  the  lowered  tone 
of  the  whole  service?"    He  does  not  answer  his  own 
question,  but  the  fault  clearly  lies  in  our  American 
dislike  to  authority.    We  are  weak  masters  and  slack 
servants.  We  cannot  make   our  country  a  safe  place 
to  live  in  unless  we  overcome  this  fault.   In  all  matters 
where  we  are  ultimately  responsible  for  ihe  action  of 
others,  we  must   be  willing  to  lay  down  rules  for  them 
and  insist  upon  obedience.  We  owe  this  to  ourselves,  to 


166    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

our  servants,  and  to  our  children;  we  owe  it  to  our 
country  and  to  the  progress  of  the  race.  Those  whom 
we  command  may  perhaps  be  as  well  fitted  to  rule 
as  ourselves;  but  since  we  are  in  the  master's  position 
it  is  our  duty  to  have  true  mastery,  to  rule  well  and 
thoroughly. 

In  order  to  manage  anything  successfully, 
we  need  either  a  discriminating  and  uncom- 
promising use  of  general  principles  or  a  close 
adherence  to  the  successful  methods  of  others. 
There  is  no  safety  in  trying  to  adopt  wholly 
fresh  ways  all  at  once,  for  efficient  new  pro- 
cedures which  shall  avoid  new  errors,  as  well 
as  escape  the  old  ones,  are  hard  to  devise. 
The  task  needs  ingenuity  and  exhaustless, 
patient  fair-mindedness.  It  cannot  be  accom- 
plished in  the  happy-go-lucky  humor  so  com- 
mon among  us.  We  have  an  easy  habit  of 
believing  that  some  new  conduct  would  cer- 
tainly be  better  than  the  old  ways ;  and  if  we 
cannot  see  why  it  is  not  better,  we  conclude 
that  it  is.  So  we  blunder  ahead  on  the  new 
course  until  it  has  itself  taught  us  why  not. 
We  should  avoid  much  trouble  and  frequent 
disaster  if  we  studied  the  old  customs  long 
enough  to  get  their  secrets  from  them. 


AMUSEMENTS  107 

Consequently,  it  is  well  in  the  task  of 
managing  children  not  to  throw  over  any  old 
custom  until  we  have  discovered  the  end 
which  it  was  meant  to  serve,  the  evil  which 
it  was  designed  to  avoid,  and  the  principle 
on  which  it  was  based.  Customs  are  essen- 
tially the  expression  of  long  experience.  The 
only  safe  substitute  for  them  is  the  adoption 
of  that  general  principle  whose  wisdom  un- 
derlies each  special  custom.  When  we  have 
discovered  this,  we  may  be  able  to  devise 
another  line  of  conduct  which  will  serve  the 
same  end  and  avoid  the  same  evil,  without 
so  clumsily  interfering  with  irrelevant  con- 
cerns and  innocent  pleasures. 

But  we  must  know  the  hidden  principles  — 
not  guess  at  them.  If  the  results  are  to  be 
successful,  the  principles  must  be  real.  It  is 
not  enough  to  formulate  handy  generalities 
and  call  them  principles.  Such  easily  ac- 
quired general  principles,  personal  and  emo- 
tional in  their  origin,  are  useless.  Such  are  the 
notions  that  "Whatever  is  good  is  good  for 
us,"  "If  a  thing  is  good,  the  more  of  it  the 


168    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

better,"  "Children  should  be  happy  while 
they  can,"  "If  I  see  no  harm  in  it,  there  is 
no  harm  in  it  for  me,"  "I  cannot  see  why  I 
should  not,  so  I  guess  I  may,"  "Every  one 
should  be  allowed  to  be  happy  in  his  own 
way,"  "He  has  got  to  do  it  sometime,  so  he 
may  as  well  do  it  now."  These  are  natural  and 
amiable  ideas;  but  they  contain  no  thought 
and  no  wisdom.  Parents  who  yield  to  them 
as  guides  lead  their  children  into  blind  alleys. 
Two  such  generalities  in  particular,  now 
widely  accepted,  are  spreading  their  un- 
fortunate consequences  all  about  us.  The 
first  is  that  children  have  a  right  to  hap- 
piness, immediate  and  conscious  and  con- 
tinuous. The  second  is  that  children  have  a 
right  to  choose  their  own  pleasures  and  to 
follow  their  own  inclinations.  Many  parents 
who  do  not  comprehend  or  do  not  trust  the 
experience  of  the  race,  and  are  perhaps  un- 
supplied  with  wholesome  family  traditions, 
habitually  make  choice  of  their  children's 
amusements  and  occupations  upon  these  two 
theories,  which  they  mistakenly  accept  as 
sound  general  principles.  . 


AMUSEMENTS  1G9 

These  two  involve  the  other  common  Amer- 
ican misapprehension,  that  children  are  per- 
sons in  quite  the  same  sense  that  grown  people 
are  persons.  Children  are  not  small  grown 
people;  they  are  no  more  like  grown  people 
than  flour  is  like  cake  or  grape  juice  like  wine. 
They  are  different  in  body  and  mind.  Even 
their  forms,  though  resemblant,  are  unlike; 
and  though  their  language  be  the  same,  their 
thoughts  are  different.  Parents  who  do  not 
recognize  this  fact  are  blind  to  the  real  nature 
of  life.  They  do  not  understand  that  child- 
hood is  not  only  different  from  maturity  but 
that  it  is  itself  composed  of  various  stages,  all 
differing  and  each  one  caused  by  a  natural 
progressive  change  in  bodily  formation. 

Each  change  in  bodily  formation  causes  a 
change  in  brain  ability,  and  a  consequent 
alteration  in  desires  and  in  objects  of  atten- 
tion. At  the  same  time  a  change  in  mental 
possessions,  brought  about  by  accumulating 
experiences,  influences  the  use  of  mental  and 
physical  powers,  and  consequently  alters  the 
tastes  and  interests. 


170    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

The  infant  is  unfolding  and  learning  to  use 
its  bodily  powers;  and  its  brain  is  becoming 
accustomed  to  make  simple  responses  cor- 
rectly. Consequently  its  desires  are  exceed- 
ingly simple  and  physical,  and  its  attention 
is  taken  up  with  action.  In  early  childhood 
the  body  is  changing  from  the  roundness  of 
infancy  to  the  muscular  activity  of  later  child- 
hood. The  brain  is  using  its  acquired  powers 
to  find  out  how  its  world  is  put  together  super- 
ficially, and  consequently  the  chief  desires 
are  for  occupation  and  the  attention  is  taken 
up  mostly  with  imitation.  During  later  child- 
hood the  body  grows  more  compact  and  the 
various  special  abilities  more  marked.  Dif- 
ferences of  power  in  senses  or  muscles  make 
increasing  differences  of  ability  between  child 
and  child.  The  brain  grows  more  complex, 
and  the  interchange  between  its  different 
parts  is  pretty  well  established.  Its  capacities 
grow  more  specific;  consequently  the  desires 
become  more  individual,  and  the  attention  is 
largely  fixed  upon  accumulating  information 
about  facts.  During  early  youth  the  incipient 
powers  of  life-giving  and  life-producing  de- 


AMUSEMENTS  171 

velop;  the  nervous  system  grows  much  more 
responsive  to  mental  conditions,  the  brain 
begins  to  react  strongly  upon  the  body,  and 
the  higher  powers  of  the  brain  begin  to  appear. 
Consequently  the  desires  become  more  com- 
plex and  fitful,  and  the  attention  is  fixed  upon 
other  people  and  upon  the  underlying  reasons 
for  things. 

The  consciousness  of  the  child,  his  soul 
itself,  has  to  keep  pace  with  these  rapid 
changes.  At  first  it  simply  observes  and  ac- 
cepts. Then  it  tries  experiments  of  imitation 
on  its  own  account.  Then  in  childhood  it 
begins  to  take  an  independent  stand  about 
external  matters  and  to  draw  simple  con- 
clusions of  its  own  about  relative  values; 
new  experiences  come  fast,  and  it  must  sort 
them  and  store  them  away  for  use.  In  the 
midst  of  this  youth  arrives.  The  testing  and 
sorting  is  not  half  finished,  but  there  rushes 
upon  the  unexpectant  consciousness  an  inun- 
dation of  wholly  new  experiences,  feelings, 
and  interests,  a  whole  new  world  of  new 
motives  and  sensations. 

Now  all  this  amazingly  complicated  phy- 


172    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

sical  and  spiritual  process  takes  place  in  the 
short  space  of  sixteen  or  eighteen  years,  from 
the  infant  whose  only  powers  are  to  eat  and 
digest  to  the  grown  youth  ready  to  take  up 
and  comprehend  the  innumerable  activities, 
responsibilities,  and  inheritances  of  civilized 
life.  The  more  man  grows  civilized,  the 
more  obvious  the  stages  are ;  and  every  genera- 
tion of  every  nation  from  the  beginning  has 
marked  the  physical  alterations  by  a  change 
in  the  child's  customs  and  occupations  as  he 
passes  from  one  stage  to  the  next.  But  the 
modern  American,  with  his  characteristic 
disregard  of  history,  has  decided  that  he  will 
pay  little  attention  to  this  process.  Yet  when 
once  the  process  becomes  clear  to  us,  we  should 
need  no  help  in  understanding  that  each 
stage  should  be  dealt  with  according  to  its 
nature,  and  should  not  have  thrust  upon  it 
circumstances  with  which  it  cannot  properly 
cope.  Sixteen  or  eighteen  years  of  depend- 
ence and  rapid  development  are  none  too 
many  for  the  firm  establishment  of  the  child's 
individuality.  "Prolonged  infancy"  is  the 
peculiar  privilege  of  civilized  man,  and  is  his 


AMUSEMENTS  173 

time  for  gaining  health  and  storing  strength 
in  every  part  of  his  being.  It  is  his  time  for 
gaining  ideals,  fixing  standards,  strengthen- 
ing powers,  discovering  preferences.  It  is  his 
time  for  becoming  a  real  person  of  depth 
and  definiteness,  and  for  working  out  the 
resources  of  his  own  inheritance  before  he 
begins  to  produce  an  inheritance  for  others. 
Those  who  have  charge  over  him  should  see 
to  it  that  he  is  not  cheated  of  his  chance  to 
make  from  his  inheritance  something  sound 
and  whole.  No  parents  are  wholly  content 
with  their  own  bringing  up  or  with  their  own 
capacity  for  joy  in  life  and  work.  They  can 
at  least  make  a  little  advance  for  their  chil- 
dren. Without  exceptional  insight,  a  father 
and  mother  can  give  to  sons  and  daughters 
great  and  memorable  happiness  by  securing 
for  them  a  childhood  unhampered  by  too 
many  opportunities  and  too  much  pleasure. 
Childhood  is  scarcely  more  than  a  seventh 
part  of  the  normal  term  of  life.  We  all  think 
folly  of  a  man  who  exhausts  himself  with 
pleasure  one  day  in  seven  so  that  the  other 
six  are  useless  to  him.  How  much  worse  so  to 


174    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

exhaust  a  childhood  with  pseudo-pleasures  that 
the  other  six  parts  of  life  are  maimed  and 
full  of  heaviness!  The  happiness  of  child- 
hood is  no  more  important  than  the  hap- 
piness of  youth  or  of  maturity.  Our  con- 
sciousness, our  self,  remains  the  same  through 
life.  Pleasure  is  pleasure,  pain  is  pain, 
and  at  eighty  we  are  even  more  thankful 
for  health  and  affection  than  we  were  at 
eighteen. 

So  will  it  be  with  our  children;  and  we  are 
responsible  not  only  for  making  their  child- 
hood the  best  of  its  kind,  happy  and  pros- 
perous in  itself,  full  of  really  complete  satis- 
factions, but  also  for  making  it  a  progressive, 
sound  preparation  toward  the  greatest  pos- 
sible number  of  happy,  prosperous,  and  use- 
ful hours  when  they  are  grown.  They  do 
not  even  know  what  will  make  to-day  really 
pleasant  and  satisfactory.  As  for  the  long 
period  of  their  maturity,  it  is  as  far  beyond 
their  experience  as  it  is  beyond  their  develop- 
ment. We  must  protect  them  from  their  igno- 
rant misconceptions.  It  is  not  fair  to  let  them 
follow  their  fancy  when  it  chooses  occupa- 


AMUSEMENTS  175 

tions  and  amusements  which  will  injure  them 
now  or  in  later  life. 


Stated  in  this  bald  way,  it  seems  as  if  no 
respectable  parents  could  permit  such  injury 
to  their  children.  Yet  it  is  permitted  con- 
stantly by  parents  who  arc  not  only  respectable 
but  solicitous  and  affectionate.  They  do  not 
know  that  they  are  blundering  because  they 
are  not  used  to  studying  either  consequences 
or  general  principles;  but  their  mistake  is 
patent  to  the  onlooker.  Specifically  it  is 
over-stimulation.  They  over-stimulate  a  child 
by  not  fitting  his  occupations  to  his  present 
powers:  this  is  especially  true  of  the  amuse- 
ments which  they  permit  or  provide.  What 
they  should  do,  on  the  contrary,  is  to  regulate 
his  occupations  and  especially  his  amuse- 
ments by  setting  fixed  limits  beyond  which  as  a 
matter  of  course  he  must  not  go.  They  should 
portion  his  time  among  his  occupations  so 
that  all  his  powers  shall  be  used  in  due  pro- 
portion; and  they  should  teach  him  to  control 
his  desires  and  to  depend  on  himself.  Instead 
they  make  the  mistake  of  under-regulation. 


176    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

In  dealing  with  the  first  stage  of  life,  this 
mistake  has  gone  pretty  much  out  of  use 
among  conscientious  people.  It  is  no  longer 
the  custom  to  make  of  a  baby  a  show  for 
admiring  friends  at  all  hours,  or  to  try  per- 
petually to  entertain  him.  We  know  that  life 
as  it  comes  is  sufficient  amusement  to  him, 
and  that  constant  human  intercourse  is  very 
exciting.  This  excellent  change  in  the  treat- 
ment of  babies  we  owe  to  the  baby  hospitals 
and  the  lessons  which  they  having  learned 
have  taught.  We  have  here,  at  least,  con- 
sented to  listen  to  the  voice  of  experience. 
It  is  after  babyhood  that  the  mistakes  gen- 
erally begin.  The  errors  are  not  flagrant,  per- 
haps, but  the  little  child  often  has  too  many 
clothes,  too  many  toys,  too  much  done  to  en- 
tertain him,  too  little  regularity  and  mono- 
tony and  solitude,  —  in  fact,  a  congestion  of 
opportunity. 

For  the  older  children  the  school  is  usually 
dominant;  but  the  school  seldom  aims  at 
having  a  soothing  effect  on  children.  And 
many  parents  who  can  afford  it,  —  and  there 
is  the  trouble,  they  want  to  do  all  that  they 


AMUSEMENTS  177 

can  afford  to  do  for  the  child,  —  many 
parents  add  during  the  school  year  frequent 
and  long  lessons  of  various  kinds  and  a  variety 
of  social  pleasures  and  other  "opportunities," 
including  unwholesome  things  to  eat. 

But  early  youth  is  where  the  great  mis- 
chief is  done.  Seeing  the  youth's  eager 
increase  of  desire  for  all  sorts  of  novel  ex- 
perience, and  his  new-born  appreciation  of 
human  interest,  parents  take  it  as  a  sign  of 
what  is  needed,  and  gratify  the  cravings  to 
the  limit  of  their  purses.  They  feel  that  they 
must  not  deprive  their  children  of  any  good 
that  can  be  supplied.  They  forget  that  what 
is  new-born  is  very  delicate  and  must  be  sup- 
plied most  cautiously  with  what  it  craves. 

There  is  no  reason  why  any  boy  or  girl 
should  see  every  good  play,  all  the  available 
works  of  art,  every  remarkable  performer  or 
performance  of  any  sort.  Samples,  suitable 
samples,  are  sufficient,  a  few  notable  experi- 
ences of  each  kind.  Neither  do  the  children 
need  for  social  advantage  a  steady  succes- 
sion of  dancing  parties,  lunch  parties,  dinner 
parties,  house  parties,  theatre  parties,  bridge 


178    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

parties,  any  more  than  they  need  to  smoke 
or  to  take  wine.  Physical  advantage  does  not 
demand  that  girls  should  do  fancy  dancing  in 
public,  share  in  riding  exhibitions,  and  take 
part  in  tournaments,  nor  that  boys  should 
run  wild  all  summer  in  woods  and  lakes,  or 
enter  athletic  contests  before  great  audiences. 
Intellectual  advantage  does  not  require  a 
full  round  of  concerts,  lectures,  charities, 
problem  books,  and  clubs  of  all  kinds.  So- 
cially, physically,  and  intellectually  in  our 
cities,  both  boys  and  girls  are  over-stimulated, 
they  over-do.  There  is  a  far-spread  lack  of 
wise  regulation,  especially  in  the  matter  of 
social  life  among  large  numbers  of  mere 
acquaintances. 

Such  social  life  is  essentially  adult  life. 
For  its  proper  use  and  understanding  it 
needs  all  the  accumulated  knowledge  of 
individual  characters  which  has  gradually 
been  absorbed  during  the  self-engrossed  years 
of  immaturity.  To  socialize  a  child  —  that 
is,  to  surround  him  with  occupations  which 
throw  upon  him  social  responsibilities  — 
dazes  his  youth  and  dulls  his  maturity.    In 


AMUSEMENTS  179 

society,  comfort  and  success  demand  a  know- 
lodge  of  character,  an  understanding  of  moral 
issues,  and  a  clear  judgment  about  the  relative 
values  of  aesthetic,  financial,  social,  and  eth- 
ical claims.  Such  knowledge,  understanding, 
and  judgment  a  child  cannot  gain.  Society 
life  puts  upon  him  what  he  cannot  carry, 
quite  as  really  as  if  he  were  laboring  in  a  coal 
mine.  Child-labor  stunts  the  body.  Unchild- 
ish  pleasure  dwarfs  the  mind,  the  will,  and 
the  emotions,  by  over-stimulation. 

No  parent  can  look  too  sharply  into  his  own 
policy  in  these  matters.  We  are  each  respon- 
sible for  discovering  our  own  share  in  the 
present  distressing  condition  of  nerve  weak- 
ness throughout  the  community.  It  is  caused 
by  over-stimulation,  and  it  must  be  cured  by 
proper  regulation.  We  must  learn  to  observe 
consequences  in  our  own  lives,  our  friends' 
lives,  and  the  life  of  the  race;  to  balance  one 
value  against  another,  and  so  to  choose  the 
greater  among  admissible  pleasures.  By  cul- 
t  i  vating,  in  this  way,  a  sense  of  true  propor- 
tion, we  shall  establish  broad  lines  of  total 


180    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

elimination,  within  which  we  shall  have  con- 
stantly in  use  principles  of  choice  which  will 
prevent  us  from  planning  for  ourselves  or  the 
children  more  than  we  can  justly  perform, 
and  will  save  us  from  accepting  what  we  can- 
not freely  use. 

The  broad  lines  of  elimination  seem  at 
first  sight  easy  to  establish.  We  have  merely 
to  avoid  what  is  harmful,  —  to  admit  no 
pleasure  which  is  bad  for  the  health,  bad  for 
the  morals,  or  bad  for  the  inner  self.  This 
seems  easy  and  eminently  obvious.  Yet  such 
pleasures  are  exceedingly  common,  even 
among  the  children  of  solicitous  parents. 
In  practical  application,  wise  elimination  is 
not  a  simple  task,  for  it  necessitates  shutting 
out  not  only  the  pleasures  which  are  always 
harmful,  but  those  which  are  unfit  at  each 
especial  stage. 

For  instance,  although  no  one  would  choose 
an  occupation,  much  less  a  pleasure,  because 
it  was  bad  for  the  health,  yet  it  is  common 
enough  to  choose  one  in  spite  of  its  being  bad 
for  the  health.  Grown  people  must  often  do 
what  injures  their  health,  because  only  so  can 


AMUSEMENTS  181 

they  pain  something  more  important  than 
health.  But  our  children  have  no  such  re- 
sponsibilities. Life  for  them  now  must  hold 
only  what  is  best  for  the  whole  self  and  for 
each  part  of  the  whole  self. 

Consider  going  to  the  theatre,  for  instance.  Going 
to  the  theatre  a  few  times  in  a  winter  is  good  for  older 
children,  provided  it  does  not  interfere  with  the  next 
day's  duties  and  provided  that  the  play  is  suited  to 
their  stage  of  development.  But  going  to  the  theatre 
a  dozen  times  in  a  winter  cannot  be  good  for  any  chil- 
dren, no  matter  how  old,  —  even  if  there  were  by  a 
miracle  twelve  plays  given  in  one  winter  worth  their 
seeing.  Parents  often  do  not  take  the  trouble  to  find 
out  beforehand  what  the  play  is  like,  and  do  not  guess 
afterwards  what  harmful  impressions  have  been  left 
on  the  child's  uncritical  consciousness.  There  is  most 
frequently  the  emotional  harm  of  witnessing  experi- 
ences  which  their  own  real  life  could  not  or  should  not 
bring  for  years  yet.  There  is  too  often  also  the  moral 
harm  of  receiving  ideas  of  bad  conduct  and  motives 
which  they  never  would  have  invented  for  themselves 
and  cannot  estimate  correctly.  Then,  too,  there  is 
unavoidably  the  physical  disadvantage  to  them  of 
sitting  inactive  in  a  crowded  room  for  three  hours, 
gazing  at  a  bright  light,  and  having  their  brains  made 
unnaturally  active  by  following  an  artificial  rapidity 
of  happenings.  And  there  is,  too,  the  deprivation  of 
not  being  out-of-doors,  muscularly  active,  or  in  bed, 


182    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

sound  asleep,  laying  up  stores  of  strength  all  that  time. 
The  same  considerations,  of  course,  cover  all  late 
hours.  Once  or  twice  a  winter  to  be  up  late  is  no  harm 
even  to  quite  a  little  child,  but  to  be  up  late  once  a 
week  is  bad  for  any  and  all  children.  A  growing  body 
is  like  the  body  of  a  convalescent;  it  needs  much  sleep 
for  recuperation.  A  maturity  which  shall  be  fit  to  meet 
all  responsibilities  and  pleasures  serenely  and  hardily 
can  be  built  only  on  a  sound  nervous  system,  and  a 
sound  nervous  system  can  be  got  only  by  spending 
a  wholesome  youth. 

Again,  it  is  obvious  that  no  solicitous  parent 
would  deliberately  press  upon  children  what 
is  bad  for  their  morals.  But  the  incipient 
moral  sense  needs  to  be  formed  firmly  along 
very  simple  lines  of  insistence  before  the 
judgment  is  in  a  condition  to  confront  diffi- 
cult situations.  Right  principles  and  practice 
must  be  given  full  chance  to  become  dear  and 
necessary  through  familiarity  and  unbroken 
ascendency. 

The  plays  the  children  go  to,  the  books  they  read, 
the  conversations  they  hear,  should  all  strengthen  the 
impressions  which  are  to  govern  them  in  the  days  of 
independence.  We  must  not  forget  that  much  which 
grown  people  must  face  is  confusing  in  its  moral  pur- 
port. Problem  books  and  problem  plays  are  not  fit  for 
minds  that  have  as  yet  no  trustworthy  clues  by  which  to 


AMUSEMENTS  183 

solve  the  problems.    Evil  notions,  sordid  motives,  low 
lives  should  not  be  talked  of  lightly  before  them. 

This  is  the  reason  for  shielding  the  chil- 
dren,—  not  in  the  wish  that  they  might  never 
know  evil,  but  with  the  intention  that  when 
they  do  know,  as  know  they  should,  they  shall 
be  clear  and  firm  in  judgment  and  choice.  A 
hindrance  with  most  grown  people  is  that  their 
moral  sense  is  not  clear  and  firm.  They  can- 
not be  firm  because  they  are  not  clear  about  _;  O 
relative  moral  values.  If  we  deal  fairly  with 
the  children  in  this  matter  of  elimination, 
the  next  generation  will  know  better  than 
ours  how  to  avoid  graft  and  divorce  and 
embezzlement,  public  mistakes  and  personal 
disillusion. 

An  injury  to  the  body  has  palpable  con- 
sequences, and  an  injury  to  morals  is  a  men- 
ace to  the  community.  Therefore  these  two 
are  recognized  evils;  but  what  is  bad  for 
the  inner  self  has  invisible  consequences,  and 
is  therefore  seldom  vigorously  decried.  To 
talk  of  it  has  a  somewhat  sentimental  sound. 
Theoretically,  in  a  religious  sense,  most  of  us 
believe  in  our  souls,  but  practically  wTe  are 


•"«! 


184    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

liable  to  avoid  making  definite  provision  for 
their  comfort  and  health.  What  is  bad  for 
the  inner  self  is  seldom  recognized  as  harmful 
by  a  child  till  long  afterwards,  and  is  usually 
unacknowledged  or  unknown  by  the  parent; 
commonly  the  good  of  the  inner  self  is  left 
almost  to  accident.  Yet  this  inner  self  is 
to  be  the  child's  one  unfailing  companion 
through  life,  and  his  whole  personal  happi- 
ness depends  upon  its  condition.  We  should 
be  solicitous  against  what  injures  it.  All  that 
restricts  it,  injures  it.  The  inner  self  must 
have  space  and  leisure.  In  youth,  our  com- 
panions should  be  chiefly  individuals  not 
companies,  friends  not  acquaintances.  Keen 
adult  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  enjoy- 
ment of  passing  human  intercourse  can  be  had 
only  after  long  companionships  during  child- 
hood and  close  intimacies  during  youth. 
Space  and  leisure  for  these  must  not  be 
pushed  out  to  make  room  for  "desirable" 
acquaintances,  much  less  to  provide  for  showy 
accomplishments  or  brilliant  amusements.  A 
parent  who  encourages  such  accomplishments 
and  such  amusements  is  yielding  to  the  nat- 


AMUSEMENTS  185 

ural  love  of  excitement.  People,  old  or  young, 
enjoy  excitemenl  because  it  makes  them  feel 
very  much  alive  and  relieves  them  from  all 
sense  of  responsibility.  But  frequent  excite- 
ment is  bad,  because  it  taxes  vitality  too  much 
all  at  one  time.  Every  one  who  has  learned 
the  dependable  joy  of  wholesome  pleasures 
and  the  satisfaction  of  responsibilities  skill- 
fully met,  gets  a  great  distaste  for  frequent 
and  factitious  excitement.  Any  parent  who 
has  the  courage  to  deny  his  children  the  in- 
jurious excitements  need  not  fear  that  he  is 
depriving  them  of  rightful  enjoyment,  pro- 
vided that  he  substitutes  the  saner  pleasures. 

Just  at  present,  girls  are  especial  sufferers  from 
unsuitable  amusements.  Much  harm  comes  from  the 
notion  that  they  may  do  with  impunity  whatever  the 
boya  may  do  without  injury.  But  they  cannot.  They 
are  not  like  boys.  They  are  much  more  excitable;  they 
are  more  personally  sensitive  in  body  and  spirit;  and 
more  socially  affectable,  because  their  nervous  centres 
are  more  completely  inter-active.  Public  athletic  com- 
petitions, for  instance,  well-conducted,  may  sometimes 
be  good  for  boys  over  fourteen,  but  they  are  alto- 
gether bad  for  girls.  The  eagerness  for  winning  and 
the  excitement  of  publicity  are  both  demoralizing  to 
them.     Again,  private  athletic  sports,  while  they  are 


186    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND  VACATION 

good  for  girls  who  conduct  themselves  like  girls,  are 
not  good  for  girls  who  conduct  themselves  like  boys, 
—  not  good  either  for  their  health  or  for  their  inner 
selves.  Lunch  parties  and  dinner  parties  are  doubt- 
less very  good  fun  to  girls  in  their  early  teens.  Scarcely 
older  than  children,  they  have  not  yet  outgrown  the 
zest  of  playing  at  being  grown  up.  But  apart  from  the 
gastronomical  joys,  the  real  pleasure  of  such  parties 
consists  in  conversation,  and  conversation  has  signifi- 
cance and  value  only  for  the  experienced  mind,  which 
can  discern  underlying,  unexpressed  thoughts  and 
motives.  Such  experience  can  be  got  not  from  the 
touch-and-go  intercourse  of  never-so-many  gregarious 
occasions,  but  from  the  long  leisures  of  individual  and 
intimate  companionships.  Children  who  spend  much 
time  in  company  have  little  time  for  intimacy.  Danc- 
ing parties,  to  be  sure,  have  the  advantage  of  vigor- 
ous exercise  and  lively  comradeship;  but  in  their  ordi- 
nary form  they  have  the  disadvantage  of  late  hours 
and  artificial  ambitions.  House  parties  may  be  whole- 
some, but  usually  they  are  the  opportunity  for  careless 
manners  and  irresponsible  familiarities  with  mere 
acquaintances. 

After  making,  in  such  ways,  wholesale 
elimination  of  all  amusements  and  occupa- 
tions that  are  sure  to  be  harmful,  the  next 
necessity  is  to  get  rid  of  all  that  are  wasteful, 
by  establishing  a  balance  among  those  mul- 
titudinous pleasures  any  of  which  are  good 


AMUSEMENTS  187 

and  desirable.  Eaeh  possible  pleasure  has 
always  to  be  considered  in  several  aspects. 
It  has  to  be  judged  not  only  for  the  harm 
it  might  do,  but  chiefly  for  its  good  conse- 
quences, so  that  we  may  decide  whether  it 
or  another  would  just  now  bring  the  greater 
measure  of  advantage  present  and  to  come. 
vThus  a  gradual  exclusion  narrows  down  the 
list  of  pleasures,  first  in  general  principles, 
then  further  to  fit  a  special  character,  then 
still  further  to  suit  particular  circumstances. 
Even  at  last,  the  number  of  available  plea- 
sures remains  larger  than  any  one  person  can 
possibly  "get  round  to,"  more  than  the  hours 
in  the  day  can  hold.  The  final  deciding  factor 
of  practical  choice  will  be  at  last  the  passing 
personal  preference  and  convenience  of  the 
child,  and  your  own  convenience  at  the  mo- 
ment. Thus  at  last  by  regulation  a  due  bal- 
ance is  established.  First,  by  general  princi- 
ples of  elimination  there  is  set  the  necessary 
fixed  limit  beyond  which  a  child  must  not  go; 
then  further  by  considering  his  special  char- 
acter and  circumstances,  his  time  is  portioned 
among  his  occupations  so  that  all  his  powers 


188     HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND   VACATION 

shall  be  used  in  due  proportion;  and  finally 
by  making  him  choose  among  his  personal 
preferences  and  consider  your  convenience, 
he  is  taught  to  control  his  desires  and  de- 
pend upon  himself.  Among  the  countless 
tempting  things  which  might  wisely  be  chosen 
a  child  must  take,  on  this  basis,  only  enough 
comfortably  to  fill  the  waking  time.  Such 
careful  choice  does  not  make  any  less  delight- 
ful the  pleasures  which  are  chosen.  It  in- 
creases and  prolongs  enjoyment. 

In  trying  to  preserve  due  balance  one  has 
to  be  constantly  on  one's  guard  against  the 
impression  that  it  is  well  to  have  a  great  deal 
of  whatever  is  good,  —  the  more  the  better,  — 
so  that  a  good  experience  cannot  be  repeated 
too  often.  This  is  a  complete  misapprehen- 
sion. The  truth  is,  on  the  contrary,  that 
reiterated  experience  has  almost  always  a 
constantly  decreasing  value;  and,  as  it  be- 
comes too  often  repeated,  its  disadvantages 
begin  to  operate.  A  medicine  which  is  cura- 
tive when  taken  for  a  week,  may  grow  sick- 
ening when  continued  for  a  month.  A  sample 


AMUSEMENTS  189 

is  often  sufficient,  and,  as  regards  many  a 
good  thing,  once  is  enough.  Once  is  always 
enough  to  make  the  difference  between  have 
and  have  not.  Once  having  seen  snow,  we 
can  never  return  to  a  snowless  consciousness; 
once  having  cared  for  a  dog,  we  need  not  own 
all  sorts  of  dogs,  or  also  cats,  rabbits,  horses, 
and  canaries,  in  order  to  experience  affection 
for  the  lower  animals;  once  having  really 
learned  to  milk  a  cow,  hem  a  handkerchief,  or 
bake  a  cake,  we  need  not  keep  on  milking,  or 
hemming,  or  baking,  in  order  not  to  lose  the 
experience.  We  must  keep  on  if  we  wish  to 
acquire  special  skill;  but  once  having  done 
any  particular  thing,  we  find  that  the  value 
as  an  experience  of  each  fresh  repetition  is 
almost  in  inverse  proportion,  as  it  were,  to 
the  number  of  times  that  it  has  been  repeated. 
In  fact,  experiences  are  liable  to  be  self- 
completing,  so  that  repetition  quickly  be- 
comes reiteration.  This  is  equally  true  of 
experiences  so  closely  akin  that  they  would 
come  under  the  same  general  class  —  like 
hemming  and  overcasting,  which  are  both 
simply  experiences  of  sewing. 


190    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

On  the  other  hand,  conditions,  that  is,  states 
of  mind,  body,  or  emotion,  can  be  continuing 
and  progressive.  If  a  condition  be  desirable, 
the  value  of  it  is  generally  in  direct  proportion, 
as  it  were,  to  the  length  of  time  it  has  endured. 
There  is  the  desirable  mental  condition  of 
clearness,  for  instance.  The  longer  it  endures, 
the  more  clear  and  therefore  the  more  val- 
uable the  mind  becomes.  It  is  produced  not 
by  any  particular  experience,  but  by  exercis- 
ing the  mind  clearly  upon  each  experience 
which  offers  itself.  Some  experiences,  such 
as  arithmetic  examples,  give  more  opportu- 
nity for  this  practice  than  others,  such  as 
shoveling  coal.  If,  however,  multifarious 
experiences  of  any  sort  offer  themselves  at 
once  or  in  rapid  succession,  the  mind  is  un- 
able to  attend  to  them  all,  and  cannot  retain 
clearness.  It  becomes  confused  by  over- 
stimulation. And  as  it  is  with  clearness,  so  it 
is  with  all  other  desirable  mental  conditions. 
They  cannot  be  continuing  and  strong  if  the 
attention  is  over-stimulated.  Over-stimulation 
results  in  a  sort  of  mental  congestion. 

Another  result  of  the  notion  that  there  can- 


AMUSEMENTS  101 

not  be  too  much  of  a  good  thing  is  mental 
stagnation.  Congestion  comes  from  having 
too  many  kinds  of  things  to  do;  stagnation 
from  having  too  much  of  one  kind  to  do. 
While  congestion  is  usually  a  city  product, 
stagnation  is  naturally  met  oftenest  in  the 
country.  It  seems  to  be  almost  as  injurious 
as  congestion  to  the  nerves,  though  it  certainly 
does  not  over-stimulate  the  brain.  Where  it 
exists,  the  same  amusement  is  provided  or 
permitted  for  a  child  over  and  over  again, 
without  a  step  of  progress,  with  all  the  stupid 
reiteration  of  marking  time. 

Sometimes  a  girl  who  is  fond  of  embroidery  em- 
broiders summer  and  winter,  never  learns  to  sew  or 
to  knit,  or  to  crochet,  even  uses  always  the  same  stitch 
and  does  the  same  sort  of  patterns.  Or  a  small  boy 
who  has  a  literary  taste  is  permitted  to  take  his  pencil 
up  again  as  soon  as  he  comes  from  school  or  to  read  a 
book  all  the  afternoon.  Little  girls  are  often  allowed 
to  play  dolls  for  months  together.  They  do  not  even 
learn  to  make,  wash,  and  iron  the  doll's  clothes.  They 
do  not  keep  house  nicely  for  them.  They  simply 
"play  dolls,"  talk,  walk,  sit,  and  go  visiting  over  and 
over  again.  This  is  bad  not  merely  because  of  the 
fruitless  reiteration  in  the  mind;  it  provides  no  in- 
vigorating exercise  for  the  body  and  gives  a  paltry 


192    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

notion  of  grown-up  life.  Stagnation  is  not  so  common 
with  boys.  They  have  a  natural  bent  toward  variety, 
which  outdoor  life  fosters.  But  many  a  boy  who  likes 
sailing  goes  sailing  every  day  all  summer;  never  walks, 
never  rides,  fishes,  or  plays  games.  A  less  daring  nature 
stupidly  repeats  some  tamer  pleasure,  as  did  two  boys 
who  walked  the  same  four  miles  and  back  to  the  same 
restaurant  and  ordered  the  same  refreshments,  eighty- 
one  days  out  of  ninety-two  of  their  vacation. 

Such  things  are  merely  filling  time  instead 
of  filling  life.  This  is  ridiculous.  The  whole 
of  life  ought  to  be  filled  with  something  in- 
teresting and  progressive. 

For  instance,  it  is  good  for  children  to  learn  to  dance 
and  good  for  young  people  to  have  dances  for  social 
purposes.  But  some  mothers  send  their  children  to 
dancing-school  every  winter  for  twelve  years  or  more. 
This  is  done  for  social  purposes ;  but  a  dancing-school 
is  seldom  well  fitted  to  social  uses  of  children.  It  is 
suited  to  the  needs  and  tastes  of  advanced  youth  when 
an  interest  in  persons  has  set  in,  conversation  begins  to 
be  a  pleasure,  and  the  oppositeness  of  sex  is  an  agree- 
able factor.  Children  who  go  much  to  dancing-school 
are  liable  to  be  learning  nothing  but  shallow  ambitions; 
for  the  ordinary  dancing-school  lays  emphasis  on  the 
aesthetic  instead  of  the  moral  values,  teaching  that 
success  in  life  for  the  girls  is  to  depend  upon  good 
looks,  good  clothes,  and  glib  tongues,  coupled  with  the 
appreciation  of  these  things  by  the  boys.    The  vain 


AMUSEMENTS  193 

are  flattered  and  the  self-distrustful  go  to  the  wall.  To 
both  boys  and  girls  it  is  often  a  school  for  selfish- 
ness, both  exciting  and  stagnating.  These  evils  could 
be  avoided  if  it  were  customary  to  build  houses  with 
large  playrooms  at  the  top,  where  wholesome,  friendly 
home-dances  and  game-parties  could  be  had  for  the 
children,  —  governed  entirely  by  the  spirit  of  mutual 
kindness  and  good-will.  Here  the  boys  and  girls  could 
learn  in  a  natural  school  the  true  deportment  of  good 
breeding,  which  is  based  upon  the  dictates  of  unselfish- 
ness even  toward  mere  acquaintances  and  strangers. 
Then  when  they  came  to  large  affairs  and  public 
gatherings  they  would  enjoy  the  real  and  smile  at  the 
extraneous,  carrying  themselves  with  ease  and  not 
affectation.  Indeed,  with  care,  even  dancing-schools 
can  be  made  to  yield  the  same  advantage. 

Vacation  is  an  especial  opportunity  for  a  stagnant 
mental  condition.  Vacations  used  scarcely  to  exist. 
Sixty  years  ago  good  schools  had  only  three  weeks' 
vacation.  But  teachers  have  recently  taken  education 
up  so  ardently  and  are  compressing  so  much  into  one 
school  day  that  they  have  to  provide  a  long  relaxation, 
and  families  have  besides  adopted  the  custom  of  sum- 
mer migration.  Hence,  the  long  vacation;  which  we 
actually  take  at  its  apparent  meaning  to  be  vacant 
time,  and  we  let  it  be  empty  of  profit.  Yet  there  is 
plenty  to  do:  outdoor  science,  with  or  without  a  teacher; 
languages,  with  or  without  a  teacher;  systematic  read- 
ing; the  keeping  of  records;  creative  work,  mental  or 
manual  according  to  the  child's  taste;  perfecting  skill  in 
sports  ;  making  new  excursions  or  improving  old  ones; 


194    HOME,   SCHOOL,   AND   VACATION 

—  hosts  of  things.  But  dawdling  and  reiteration  and 
sitting  about  talking  all  day  should  be  tabooed  and 
impossible.  The  "gang"  life  of  many  girls  and  boys 
at  summer  hotels  and  summer  resorts  is  stagnant, 
even  if  by  good  fortune  it  be  not  malarious.  And  so 
sometimes  is  even  the  camp  life  which  is  so  common  a 
resource  now  for  parents  with  boys  and  girls  whom  they 
cannot  occupy.  Many  camps  have  in  them  no  com- 
pensation for  depriving  a  boy  or  girl  all  summer  of 
most  of  the  influences  which  go  to  develop  the  civil- 
ized creature  in  them.  In  such  camps,  if  they  stay  very 
long,  all  their  finer  faculties  stagnate,  primitive  oppor- 
tunity reiterates,  simple  experience  recurs.  A  well- 
managed  camp  guards  against  this  by  careful  regula- 
tion, and  is  a  most  wholesome  substitute  for  hotels 
and  watering-places.  Sunday,  too,  has  become  a 
vacant  day  or  one  which  is  meaningless  in  many  homes 
which  have  done  away  with  the  old-time  frequent 
church-going  and  prescribed  sacred  reading.  Some- 
times the  children  spend  Sunday  in  social  dawdling, 
sometimes  in  week-day  games  and  studies.  This  is 
a  great  loss  of  opportunity.  The  sacred  character  of 
Sunday  can  be  and  should  be  retained  even  in  families 
which  no  longer  recognize  the  sacred  character  of 
church.  Sunday  is  a  day  for  setting  free  the  higher 
nature.  Close  human  bonds  of  family  affection  or  close 
friendship  should  be  given  a  chance  to  strengthen. 
Serious,  stirring  thoughts  should  be  brought  upper- 
most. The  depth  and  dignity  of  life  should  become 
apparent  through  special  recognition.  Sunday  is  a 
day  of  opportunity.    It  should  not  yield  stagnation, 


AMUSEMENTS  195 

for  that  is  more  unlovely,  even  if  it  be  not  more  baneful 
than  congestion. 

A  stagnating  day,  a  day  without  mental 
motion,  should  seem  to  a  child  or  youth  as 
unsatisfactory  as  a  day  without  dinner.  It 
should  seem  queer,  unnatural,  leaving  him 
vaguely  hungry.  Outside  the  prescribed  work 
of  school,  his  occupations  and  amusements 
ought  to  be  along  the  lines  of  self-chosen 
interests,  thrown  in  his  way  it  may  be  by 
others,  but  taken  up  of  his  own  motion.  His 
leisure  time  should  not  be  empty.  In  short, 
the  cure  for  stagnation  lies  in  the  conviction 
that  progress  is  essential.  Stagnation  would 
not  be  possible  if  parents  steadily  remem- 
bered that  the  persistent  human  need  is  a 
constantly  fresh  exercise  of  power. 

Congestion  and  stagnation  are  both  gross 
errors,  easy  to  avoid  when  once  they  are 
recognized.  But  in  the  actual  final  choice  it 
is  difficult  to  be  sure  that  one's  decision  will 
really  secure  a  satisfactory  balance.  The  task 
is  so  to  choose  that  each  power  in  the  child 
shall  be  gratified  in  proportion  to  its  durable 


196    HOME,  SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

human  value.  This  requires  a  sense  of  human 
values  and  a  fine  perception  of  what  effect 
each  gratification  has  upon  the  several  powers. 
For  each  experience  affects  all  the  child's 
powers  at  once  and  alters  the  condition  of 
each  in  varying  degree.  To  judge  of  the 
probable  value  of  any  occupation  or  amuse- 
ment to  any  special  child,  we  must  have  a 
lively  conception  of  what  the  child  is  in  his 
best  estate  and  what  sort  of  creature  he  is  to 
grow  to  be.  No  special  advice  that  is  practi- 
cally useful  can  be  given  by  an  outsider.  Our 
success  must  depend  upon  our  own  sense  of 
proportion,  upon  the  fineness  of  our  feeling 
for  balance  and  adjustment. 

It  is  possible  by  over-stimulus  and  want  of 
regulation  to  rob  a  child  of  the  best  of  all  that 
immaturity  has  to  give  him,  and  so  to  send 
him  into  the  world  which  must  receive  him, 
an  obstructed  creature,  confused  in  thought 
and  feeling,  and  with  a  nervous  system  so 
broken  that  little  reliance  can  be  placed  on 
his  assistance  or  his  judgment.  It  is  possible 
by  elimination  and  balance  to  secure  for  him 
the  best  of  all  that  childhood  and  youth  can 


AMUSEMENTS  197 

hold,  and  thus  to  bring  him  to  the  world 
which  needs  him,  a  developed  creature,  elas- 
tic and  eager  in  thought  and  feeling,  and 
with  a  nervous  system  so  sound  and  whole 
that  he  is  steadily  able  to  fill  the  place  that 
fits  him  and  to  reap  the  full  yield  of  what  life 
can  offer  him. 

This  does  not  demand  perpetual  attention 
or  profound  thought.  The  point  to  establish 
is  the  kind  of  thing  to  be  permitted  for  each 
stage.  Then  provide  the  simplest  of  necessary 
material,  and  the  children's  own  unresting 
activity  and  zest  will  accomplish  the  desired 
end.  Build  them  from  within  out.  Give 
them  a  full  chance  to  learn  the  spirit  and 
heart  of  things  before  crowding  upon  them 
the  accepted  methods  of  expression.  Do  not 
let  them  get  accretions  of  manners,  opinions, 
tastes,  or  knowledge  gained  from  imitation 
and  passive  observation  through  a  mere  desire 
to  conform  or  to  please.  These  make  a  wall 
of  habit  around  a  child's  real  understanding 
and  impulses.  Men  who  have  been  built  up 
from  within  out,  have  an  enduring  centre  of 
health  and  steadiness.    Their  childhood  was 


198    HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

not  over-stimulated  or  allowed  to  stagnate; 
they  have  a  superior  charm,  and  are  to  them- 
selves and  others  a  constant  invigoration. 

Always  it  must  be  remembered  that,  whereas 
adults  are  gregarious,  complex,  possessed  of 
many  faculties  and  much  experience,  children 
are  self-centred,  simple,  with  undeveloped 
powers  and  scanty  experience.  Childhood  is 
very  self-sufficing.  The  smaller  the  child  is, 
the  more  this  is  true,  though  childhood  in  this 
sense  does  not  come  wholly  to  a  legitimate 
end  before  the  age  of  eighteen  or  even  twenty. 
Its  four  stages  are  each  a  little  more  advanced 
toward  maturity  than  the  one  before,  but  each 
is  marked  by  the  same  necessity  for  being 
allowed  a  habitable  world  of  its  own,  unper- 
plexed  by  the  occupations,  responsibilities, 
and  pleasures  of  maturity.  Let  each  stage 
begin  with  a  little  of  the  new  which  is  to  come 
during  its  progress,  but  let  it  not  accumulate 
all  until  the  end.  Let  each  have  toward  its 
end  a  slight  foretaste  of  what  is  to  come  in 
the  stage  beyond,  but  only  enough  to  prevent 
shock  when  the  change  comes.  Make  amuse- 
ments as  well  as  all  other  occupations  corre- 


AMUSEMENTS  199 

spond  to  age  and  development.  To  do  this 
well,  parents  need  to  keep  a  clear  vision  of 
what  is  a  normal,  healthy,  progressive  child- 
hood, and  of  what  is  the  full  maturity  toward 
which  the  children  should  be  moving;  and, 
above  all,  they  need  to  remember  that  each 
child  is  a  separate  problem,  altering  at  every 
stage. 

By  holding  these  considerations  steadily  in 
mind,  and  putting  them  bravely  into  prac- 
tice, we  shall  take  our  fair  share  in  the  work 
of  abolishing  the  present  distressing  condition 
of  nerve  weakness,  and  building  up  in  our 
nation  steady  health,  rational  life,  and  full 
development. 


HEALTH 

So  much  has  been  said  and  so  well  said,  dur- 
ing the  past  twenty  years,  about  the  physical 
care  of  children,  that  nothing  detailed  upon 
the  subject  is  needed  here.  But  a  book  on 
the  training  of  children  cannot  rightly  omit 
to  emphasize  the  necessity  for  securing  to 
each  child  the  best  health  of  which  he  is 
capable. 

A  man  in  poor  health  can  be  efficient,  cul- 
tivated, and  full  of  knowledge.  He  can  be 
good  and  useful,  and  self-dependent;  and  if 
his  powers  permit,  he  can  be  even  great.  But 
his  inner  self  suffers.  He  cannot  reach  his 
own  fullest  self-use;  he  cannot  know  the  joy 
of  balanced  powers;  and  he  can  never  come 
into  possession  of  the  soundest  judgment  of 
which  he  is  capable. 

Ill-health  saps  the  nerves  and  wastes  the 
attention.     It    makes    a    perfectly   free,    un- 


HEALTH  201 

troubled  mind  impossible.  Hence  it  makes 
thoroughly  sound  judgment  impossible.  Ill- 
health  wastes  time,  and  no  matter  how  much 
happiness  a  sick  man  may  compass,  he  would 
have  more  happiness  if  he  had  more  un- 
troubled hours. 

In  planning  to  give  our  children  good 
health  so  far  as  in  us  lies,  we  need  the  same 
point  of  view  that  we  need  in  planning  for 
their  mental  benefit,  —  the  home  point  of 
view.  It  is  home,  not  the  doctor,  that  secures 
them  good  health.  The  doctor  merely  saves 
them  from  sickness. 

And  the  home  procedure  toward  health  is 
also  very  simple.  It  requires  no  technical  or 
professional  knowledge  whatever. 


Four  things  it  requires  for  the  child,  in  or- 
der to  maintain  health :  — 

1.  Plenty  of  quiet  sleep  at  regular  hours. 

2.  Plenty  of  simple  food  at  regular  hours. 

3.  Plenty  of  fresh  air  at  all  hours. 

4.  A  daily  movement  of  the  bowels. 


202     HOME,   SCHOOL,  AND  VACATION 

Four  things  it  exacts  from  the  mother,  in 
order  to  avoid  sickness :  — 

1.  Close  watching  of 

the  color  of  the  skin, 

especially,  under  the  eyes, 

on  the  lips, 

round  the  mouth, 

the  ears; 
the  brightness  of  the  eyes; 
the  general  bearing; 
the  tongue  and  the  temperature. 

2.  Sending  for  the  doctor  immediately, 

as  soon  as  the  mother  wonders  what  to  do. 

3.  Implicitly  obeying  the  doctor's  directions. 

4.  Not  fussing. 

This  is  actually  all  that  is  required  in  the 
attempt  to  lay  up  in  a  child  all  those  stores  of 
reserve  strength  which  constitute  firm  health. 
All  other  physical  attention  is  either  care  of 
the  child  in  sickness,  or  else  assistance  toward 
further  development. 


A  TABLE  OF  BEGINNINGS 


Every  one  who  has  charge  of  children  feels  the  need 
from  time  to  time  of  some  reminder  about  the  sequence 
of  childish  growth  and  interest.  The  following  table 
should  serve  as  a  series  of  such  reminders.  The  figures 
on  the  dotted  lines  indicate  the  advancing  years  of  child- 
hood. The  words  at  the  head  of  the  columns  indicate  six 
different  fields  of  progress.  If  the  table  be  read  between 
two  dotted  lines,  across  two  opposite  pages,  a  general 
list  of  suitable  occupations  and  preoccupations  for  some 
one  age  is  suggested.  If  it  be  read  down  one  column, 
through  three  pages,  a  progressive  list  in  some  especial 
field  is  developed. 

TJie  suggestions  and  developments  are  not  intended 
as  directions  and  must  be  considered  always  tentatively. 
Many  things,  for  instance,  are  apparently  too  difficult 
for  the  age  at  which  they  appear.  Rowing,  of  course, 
cannot  serve  any  practical  use  at  the  age  of  six.  But  it  is 
an  experience  of  great  advantage  to  a  vigorous  child  if 
he  rows  for  only  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  without  strain. 
Thus,  at  six  he  gets  the  idea  and  feeling  of  it  simply  as 
an  experience;  the  next  year  he  practices  it  more  seri- 
ously, and  by  the  time  lie  is  eight  he  can  row  a  light 
load  very  well.  But  he  must  not  be  kept  at  it  until  it 
becomes  drudgery.  This  distinction  between  experience, 
practice,  and  drudgery  must  be  constantly  in  the  parent's 
mind.  Once  mastering  an  idea  or  motion  is  an  expe- 
rience for  a  child,  valuable  in  itself.  Exercising  that 
mastery   gives   practice,   and,   combined   with   natural 


A  TABLE   OF  BEGINNINGS  205 

aptitude,  brings  .skill.  Going  on  with  the  exercise  to 
the  point  of  tceariness  and  past  all  possible  interest  is 
drudgery ;  and  that  is  permissible  only  for  the  gaining 
of  some  compensating  ulterior  good. 

Again,  an  interest  may  be  here  set  doivnfor  an  age 
much  older  than  some  especial  child  seized  upon  it.  This 
must  not  be  taken  as  an  indication  that  such  a  cliild 
is  harmfully  precocious.  It  may  simply  indicate  the 
familiar  truth  that  the  order  as  well  as  the  rate  of  de- 
velopment differs  widely  between  individuals. 

In  short,  regarded  as  a  fixed  schedule  the  table  appears 
ridiculous;  but  if  considered  as  a  series  of  suggestions 
it  may  sometimes  prove  useful.  Each  matter  is  men- 
tioned at  an  age  when  an  average  child  may  well  en- 
counter it  for  the  first  time;  whether  he  does  so  or  not 
depends  largely  upon  circumstances.  After  it  has  once 
been  encountered,  it  should  seldom  be  completely  dropped. 
Either  at  home  or  at  school,  it  will  continue  to  play  its 
part,  small  or  great. 


BEHAVIOB,   ETC 

Submission 
Obedience 

Self-control 

1 


TABLE  OF 


INFANCY 

{From  birth  to  about  three  years  old) 

BEADING  AND  WB1TING,  ETC.      8CTENCE,  ETC 

Qualities  of  matter 
Idea  of  direction 

Idea  of  distance 
.1 1 


Imitation 

Reasonableness 

Self-amusement 
2 


Talking 


Idea  of  quantity 
Idea  of  causes 


Idea  of  number 

.3 

Idea  of  reasons 


Self-direction 

Courage 

Politeness 

Kindness 

Gentleness 


"  Mother  Goose,"  etc. 
Picture  books 


Idea  of  relation 
Distinction  between 
past,  present,  &  future 


EARLY  CHILDHOOD 

{From  about  three  to  about  six  years  old) 

...3 3.... 


Cheerfulness 


Sincerity 


Unselfishness 
4 


Truthfulness 


Listening  to  verses  and  very 
short  stories 

Using  alphabet  blocks 
Reciting  verses 

Knowing  the  days  of  the  week 
.4 


Distinction  between 
fact  and  fancy 

Counting  ten 

Distinction  between 

right  and  left 
Idea  of  growth 
.4 


Listening  to  myths,  fairy 
tales,  etc.,  read  aloud 
Reading 
Acting  Mother  Goose,  etc. 

Knowing  names  of  the  months 

Printing  with  pencil 


Counting  things 

Names  of  common  birds 
and  flowers 

Adding  and  subtracting 
orally 

Making  the  Arabic  nu- 
merals 

Idea  of  death 


Trustworthiness 

Independence 
6 


Memorizing 


Writing 
.6 


Idea  of  birth 

Understanding  simple 
maps  and  plans 

Combining  numbers  up 
to  10 

Learning  names  of  com- 
mon trees  and  insects, 
stones  and  sea-things 

Sense  of  proportion 

G 


206 


BEGINNINGS 


ART,  ETC. 

Perception  of  light 

Distinction  between 

sounds 
Using  gentle  voice 
1 


INFANCY 

{From  birth  to  about  three  years  old) 


EXERCISE,  GAMES,  ETC. 
Using  the  muscles 
Establishing  hygienic  habits 

Creeping 
Throwing  ball 
.1 


BED   HOUR,  ETC. 

From  22  hours 
to  1G  hours 
of  sleep 
a  day 


Lullabys 


Walking 

Using  blocks,  rings,  toys 
with  wheels,  etc. 

Using  spoon  and  mug 
.2 


Sleep  from 
6  p.  m.  to  6  a.  m. 

Rest  from 

four  to  two  hours 
.2 


Using  pencil 
Stringing  beads 

without  plan 
Distinguishing 

tastes  and  colors 
Sewing  cards 
Undressing 


8. 


"  Finger  plays  " 
"  Mother  plays  " 
Animal  toys 
EARLY  CHILDHOOD 

{From  about  three  to  about  six  years 


Sleep  from 
0  p.  in.  to  G  a.  m. 

Rest  from 

four  to  two  hours 


old) 
..3. 


Reproducing  singing 
tones 

Partly  dressing 

Cutting 

Picking  up  toys 

Looking  at  good  pic- 
tures 

Distinguishing  smells       Taking  walks 


"  Button,  button,"  "Barberry- 
bush,"  etc. 
Sandpile  play 
Helping  older  people 
Running 


Sleep  from 
6  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


Rest  from 
three  to  one  hours 


Singing  scale  Helping  with  dishes 

Coloring  pictures  "  London  Bridge."  etc. 

Sewing  cloth  &  buttons  Mud  pies 

More    difficult  kinder-  Swinging 
garten  work 

Singing  songs 

5 5 


Sleep  from 
6  p.  m.  to  7  a.m. 

Rest  from 

three  to  one  hours 


Dressing  entirely 
Clay  work 
Weaving 
Pasting 
Listening  to  good 


Family  singing 
G 


Dusting,  Brushing  up 

"  Going  to  Jerusalem,"  etc. 


Driving  hoop,  Climbing  trees, 

ladders,  etc. 
Marching 


Sleep  from 
6  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


Rest  as  needed 


207 


TABLE  OF 


LATER  CHILDHOOD 

{From  about  six  to  about  twelve  years  old) 
BEHAVIOR,  ETC.     READING  AND  WRITING, ETC.         SCIENCE,   ETC. 


(',. 


Reserve  about 
private  and 
personal  matters 

Sense  of 
responsibility 


8 


Silent  reading  of  poetry, 
good  stories,  science 
readers,  etc. 

Writing  letters 

Spelling 

Typewriting 


Combining  numbers 
to  Hid 

Understanding  world- 
maps  and  the  globe 

Telling  time 

Simple  botany 


Respect 


8 

Loyalty 
to  persons 


French  language 

Reading,  both  silent  and  loud, 
and  listening  to  reading 
of  any  suitable  books, 
especially  books  bearing 
upon  school  studies 


S 


Outline  maps 

Leaf  collection 
Formal  arithmetic 

Simple  hygiene 
Understanding  birth 

.8 

Making  raised  maps 
Flower  collection 


Refinement 
9 


10. 


11. 


Loyalty 
to  principle 


12.. 


Sense  of  personal  American 

honor  history 

Precision 
in  execution 


Reverence 

Perseverance 
with  long  plans 


10. 


Simple  physiology 
.9 


Collection  of 
shells  and  stones 

Simple  zoology 
.10 


Helping  with  a  home-written         Butterfly  collection 
magazine. 


Ancient  history 
11 


Stamp  collection 

Inventional 
geometry 
.11 


Keeping  a  journal 

Reading  historical  romances, 
etc. 

Greek  history 

12 


Simple  facts  of 
physics  and 
chemistry 


.12. 


208 


BEGINNINGS 

LATER  CHILDHOOD 

(From  about  six  to  about  twelve  years  old) 

ART,   ETC.                 EXERCISE,   GAMES,    ETC.          BED   HOUR,   ETC. 
6 6 6 

„.     .                          ,.  Doing  some  "  chore "  regularly 

Singing  by  note  orally  Danciug)  »  French  Tag," 

Playing  piano  ..  Hunt  the  siipper,»  etc.            Sleep  from 

Using  hammer,  nails  Roller  Bkating   Jump  rope                 6.30  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 

Kn'tt'ng   .    .  Swimming 

Tracing,  etc1  Rowing 


Sight  singing 
Hemming 
Crocheting 
Modeling 


8 


Calisthenics,  "  Blind  man's 

Buff,"  etc. 
Battledore,  Tops 
Bicycling,  Ice  skating 
Digging 
Picking  berries 

8 


Sleep  from 
7  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


Lessons  on  a  special 
instrument 

Simple  cooking 

Drawing 
Whittling 

9 


Sweeping 

Card  games,  "  Dumb 

Crambo,"  etc. 
Marbles 
Driving 
Weeding 
Barnessing 

9 


Sleep  from 
7  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


Afternoon  concerts 

Darning 

Care  of  doll's  clothes 

Color  work 

Carpentry 

10 

Basketry 
Printing  press 
Cane  seating 


Washing  dishes 

Ironing 

Animal  game,  "  Coddam,"  etc. 

Sailing,  Fishing 

"Scrub,"  etc. 

Care  of  small  animals 


10. 


Housework 

"  Authors,"  "  Stage  coach," 

etc. 
Riding,  Archery 
Milking,  Currying,  etc. 
Kicking  football 


Sleep  from 
7.30  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


.10. 


Sleep  from 
7.30  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


11. 


11. 


.11. 


Part  singing 
Turning  lathe 
Embroidery 

13 


Washing  clothes 
"  Logomachi,"  "  Spelling- 
ton,"  etc. 
Hockey,  Baseball 
Cutting  grass,  Pruning 


Sleep  from 
8  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


12 12 

i  Beginning  at  this  age,  tome  constructive  work  should  be  done  every  day. 

209 


TABLE  OF 


EARLY  YOUTH 

{From  about  t>rt'r:  to  about  eighteen  yeart  old) 


BEHAVIOR,  ETC. 
12 

Chivalry 
■Womanliness 


13. 


Sense  of  official 
honor 


14 

Democratic  spirit 


15 


Sense  of  relative 
valiiea  in 
moral  and  social 
distinctions 


16. 


Loyalty  to  ideals 


17. 


Sense  of  respon- 
sibility toward 


18. 


Ide.1 

•elf-culture 


READING  AND  TTRITI>"G,ETC.          SCIENCE,  ETC. 
12 12 


Acting  small  plays  at  home 

Heading  foreign  language  alone 

■Writing  whatever  original 

composition  is  natural 
Grammar 
.13 

Novels  of  the  simpler 

realistic  sort 
Simpler  poets 

Latin 

Roman  history 
.14 


Simpler  great  masterpieces 


Famous  passages  in  English 
and  in  foreign  languages 
General  hist 

16        

German  language 
Simpler  essayists 


Afternoon  theatre  — 
comedies  and  romantic  plays 


.16. 


Biographies 
Lectures 


Evening  theatre 

Rhetoric 

17 


Serious  English  novels 
of  the  first  three  quarters 
of  the  K/th  century 

Serious  poets  and  essayists 

Civil  Government 


.18 

Tragedies 

Problem  novels  of  real 

moral  and  literary  worth- 
English  Literature 

210 


Keeping  accounts 


Understanding  sex 

Simple  algebra 
.13 


Keeping  records 
of  weather,  etc. 


Simple  physical 

geography 
.14 


Serious  hygiene  and 
physiology 

Idea  of  various  and 
sequent  causes  for  one 
result,  and  vice  versa 

Geometry 

15 

Karnes  and  natures  of 
chief  stari 
and  constellations 

Simple  geology 

.16 

Solid  geometry 


•  17. 


Following  special  or 
general  scientific 
interests 

Trigonometry 


■  18 

Biology 
Domestic  Science 


BEGINNINGS 


EAKLY  YOUTH 

(From  about  twelve  to  about  eighteen  years  old) 


ART,   ETC. 


12 

Sketching 

Scroll  saw 
13 


Carving 


14. 


Following  some 
special  talent 


15 


Design 

16 

Evening  concerts 


Culture  of  singing 
voice 


17 


Private  theatricals, 
concerts,  etc. 


18. 


Philanthropic 
interests 


EXERCISE,    GAMES,    ETC. 

.12 

Sewing  on  machine 

Cooking  meals 

"  Geography  game,"  "  Andros- 
coggin," etc. 

Tennis 

Hoeing 

Care  of  large  animals 
.13 

General  care  of  house 

Fancy  dancing 

"  History  game,"  etc. 
Golf 


.14 

Evening  game  parties 

"  Crambo,"  "  Capping 
verses,"  etc. 

Competitive  running,  jump- 
ing, etc. 

Mowing 

15 

Basketball 
Football 


Plowing 
.16 

Ordering  meals 
Evening  dancing  parties 
Long  tramps 
.17 


Lunch  parties 
Camping  out  alone 


.18 


Housekeeping 
Dinner  parties 
House  parties 


BED  HOUR,   ETC 


12. 


Sleep  from 
8  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


13- 


Sleep  from 
8.30  p.  m.  to  7  p. 


.14. 


Sleep  from 
9  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


.15. 


Sleep  from 
9  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


.16. 


Sleep  from 
9.30  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 

Semi-occasional  late 
hours 


17. 


Sleep  from 
10  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 


Occasional  late  hours 


.18 

Sleep  from 

10  p.  m.  to  7  a.  m. 

More  frequent  late 
hours 


211 


INDEX 


Adolescence  (see  Infancy),  ped- 
agogic theory  of,  76. 

Aims  (see  Motives),  of  education, 
13 ;  of  schooling,  14 ;  of  good 
school,  18 ;  of  parents,  21;  suit- 
able to  babyhood,  25;  suitable 
to  primary  school,  2S ;  suitable 
to  vanward  group,  37 ;  of  tute- 
lage, 39 ;  of  education,  42 ;  for 
character,  44;  of  home  teach- 
ing, 103 ;  of  good  reading,  115  ; 
of  discipline,  116. 

Annoyance,  maxim  of,  133. 

Argument,  maxim  of,  45. 

Arithmetic,  home  teaching  of,  95. 

Art,  home  teaching  of,  98. 

Babyhood  (see  Infancy),  duties  of, 
25  ;  teachers  of,  25;  characteris- 
tics of,  26  ;  schooling  for,  26 ; 
can  forestall  school,  48  ;  special 
interests  and  mental  powers  of, 
92  ;  method  of  home  teaching  in 
(see  Teaching),  93  ;  as  a  stage  of 
development,  170;  false  plea- 
sures in,  176. 

Balance  (see  Proportion),  is  ne- 
cessary to  completeness,  61 ;  we 
do  not  understand,  163  ;  value 
in  pleasures,  179 ;  among  plea- 
sures, 186  ;  by  regulation,  187 ; 
satisfactory,  195. 

Beginnings,  should  be  unconscious, 
89 ;  table  of,  206. 


Beliefs,  accumulated  unconscious- 
ly, 105 ;  education  selects,  106. 

Brain,  must  be  exercised,  42;  over- 
taxed, 160 ;  change  in  ability  of, 
169  ;  in  infancy,  childhood,  and 
youth,  170. 

Bribes,  maxim  of,  146. 

Changeableness,  obstacle  to  disci- 
pline, 123. 

Character,  is  alive,  60;  natural, 
118. 

Childhood,  characteristics  of,  29- 
34 ;  needs  of,  27 ;  schooling  for, 
27-32  ;  subjects  to  be  studied  by, 
31 ;  interests  suitable  to,  32 ; 
hours  of  schooling  for,  52  ;  phy- 
sical stages  of,  170;  should  be 
happy  and  progressive,  174 ; 
self-sufficing,  198. 

Children,  have  no  experience,  117  ; 
are  like  ourselves,  125  ;  are  pro- 
phecies, 130  ;  can  be  ethically 
civilized,  131 ;  are  not  like  our- 
selves, 169;  must  be  protected 
from  pleasure,  174;  over-worked, 
176 ;  socialized,  178 ;  need  lei- 
sure, 186. 

Choice,  maxim  of,  145  ;  modern 
need  of,  162 ;  no  principles  of, 
163;  on  false  principles,  168  ;  of 
harmful  pleasures,  180;  care- 
ful, 188 ;  principles  of,  in  plea- 
sures, 197. 


2H 


INDEX 


Classes,  should  be  small,  9 ;  give 
stimulus  of  numbers  and  ne- 
cessity, 17  ;  educated,  are  not 
faithful,  37. 

Coeducation,  pedagogic  theory  of, 
80. 

Comparison,  children  need  make 
none,  25  ;  belongs  to  later  life, 
33  ;  not  natural  to  children,  92 ; 
maxim  of,  153. 

Competition,  undesirable  in  child- 
hood, 32  ;  may  be  used  in  youth, 
35 ;  maxim  of,  153 ;  bad  for  girls, 
185. 

Completeness  (see  Perfection),  im- 
possible, 47 ;  entails  balance, 
61 ;  undesirable  for  small  chil- 
dren, 102. 

Consciousness,  social,  116  ;  slowly 
gained,  12S ;  self-,  maxim  of, 
151 ;  means  of  gaining,  152. 

Conservatism,  obstacle  to  disci- 
pline, 121 ;  is  mental  inertia, 
121 ;  its  cure,  122  ;  desirable  in 
managing  children,  167. 

Convictions,  concerning  education, 
46-48. 

Criticism,  unsuitable  in  children, 
33  ;  maxims  of,  154 ;  impossible 
for  children,  182. 

Culture,  contrasted  with  know- 
ledge and  efficiency,  11-14 ; 
best  acquired  at  home,  14 ; 
studies,  pedagogic  theory  of,  75. 

Desire,  wholesome,  a  final  pur- 
pose, 42  ;  importance  of,  44  ; 
not  a  mental  power,  57  ;  must 
be  reached  by  discipline,  116  ; 
remote   from    judgment,    117 ; 


seeks  the  best,  117 ;  follows 
affection,  admiration,  and  confi- 
dence, 120. 

Development,  training  to  suit,  21 ; 
different  views  of,  22 ;  incom- 
plete, 37 ;  different  in  each 
child,  41  ;  natural,  pedagogic 
theory  of,  68  ;  full,  not  now  at- 
tained, 160;  four  stages  of, 
169-174  ;  of  moral  sense,  182 ; 
of  inner  sense,  184;  of  social 
Bense,  186 ;  of  natural  self, 
197. 

Dignity,  maxim  of,  157. 

Disappointment,  maxim  of,  15. 

Discipline,  regulates  social  con- 
duct, 117;  ignorance  about,  118; 
obstacles  to,  118-125  ;  based  on 
affection,  admiration,  and  con- 
fidence, 120;  necessary,  124; 
helps  adjustment  to  life,  128  ; 
helps  development,  131 ;  gives 
a  good  start,  132  ;  triple  prob- 
lem of,  132  ;  maxims  of,  133. 

Drudgery,  decreased,  162  ;  expe- 
rience, practice,  and,  204. 

Education,  different  for  each  indi- 
vidual, 41  ;  logical  system  of, 
impossible,  46 ;  advanced  by  the 
use  of  words,  46  ;  need  not  be  a 
scramble,  53  ;  matter  of,  not  im- 
portant, 54 ;  method  of,  not  im- 
portant, 55  ;  must  be  based  on 
inductive  reasoning,  67 ;  selects 
beliefs,  106. 

Efficiency  (see  Self-dependence, 
Independence),  fostered  by 
training,  10;  result  of  logical 
thought  and   just   understand- 


INDEX 


215 


ing,  12  ;  more  important  than 
knowledge  or  culture,  12,  14  ; 
demands  thorough  knowledge, 
12;  strengthened  by  good  school- 
ing, 14 ;  causes  self-dependence, 
19. 
Enjoying  school,  necessity  for,  17; 
good  way  of,  32 ;  pedagogic 
theory  of,  71. 
Essentials,  of  schooling,  8 ;  of 
training,  10,  11,18;  of  learn- 
ing, 31 ;  for  home  teaching, 
102 ;  of  steady  health  are  ig- 
nored, 160  ;  of  steady  health  are 
principles  of  choice,  163 ;  to 
maintain  health  are  four,  201 ; 
to  avoid  sickness  are  four,  201. 
Examinations,   pedagogic   theory 

of,  84. 
Excuses,  feeble  things,  157. 
Exercise,  in  babyhood,  101. 
Experience,  as  opposed  to  condi- 
tion, 18S-190. 
Experts,  have    reiterated  experi- 
ence,   3 ;    employed    by    par- 
ents, 4 ;    as    teachers,  6 ;    are 
outsiders,  7 ;   may  be  trusted, 
8 ;  steal  privileges    of    parents, 
12  ;  mistaken  thoroughness  of, 
28. 
Explanation,  maxim  of,  144. 

Fallow  (Lying),  pedagogic  theory 
of,  68. 

Fear,  never  to  be  used  in  disci- 
pline, 150. 

Forbidding,  maxim  of,  144. 

Force,  maxim  of,  137. 

Foreigners,  as  teachers,  pedagogic 
theory  of,  74. 


Geography,  home  teaching  of,  97. 
Guidance,  maxim  of,  137. 

Habits,  maxim  of,  150. 

Happiness,  children  have  a  right 
to,  168;  of  unhampered  child- 
hood, 173  ;  of  maturity,  impor- 
tant, 174 ;  factitious,  185. 

Health,  pleasures  injurious  to, 
180 ;  requires  four  things,  201. 

History,  home  teaching  of,  97. 

Home,  inadequate,  14  ;  place  for 
adjustment,  15 ;  not  suited  for 
mental  training,  16-17 ;  being 
encroached  on  by  school,  18- 
20;  should  create  the  school, 
20 ;  opportunity  and  training, 
38  ;  should  supplement  school 
work,  48-51 ;  schooling,  peda- 
gogic theory  of,  76 ;  teaching 
unsystematic,  102  ;  dances,  193; 
secures  good  health,  201. 

Humor,  maxim  of,  134. 

Hurry,  maxim  of,  135. 

Ignoring,  maxim  of,  156. 

Independence  (see  Efficiency,  Self- 
dependence),  an  obstacle  to  dis- 
cipline, 119-122 ;  overcome  by 
affection,  etc.,  120. 

Infancy  (see  Adolescence,  Baby- 
hood, Tutelage),  teachers  of,  24; 
tasks  of,  24;  "prolonged,"  37, 
172. 

Instruction  (see  Teaching). 

Intellect  (see  Mind),  what  it  is, 
58 ;  use  of,  in  thought,  59. 

Judgment,  necessary  to  moral 
sense,  117;    separate  from  de- 


216 


INDEX 


sire,  117;  based  on  experience, 
117  ;  must  be  appealed  to,  118 ; 
moral,  128 ;  must  be  formed, 
128 ;  appealed  to  by  explanation, 
140  ;  encouraged,  145 ;  of  others 
learned  slowly,  152  ;  unsuitable 
for  children,  154. 

Keeping  Pace,  maxim  of,  155. 

Kindergarten,  pedagogic  theory 
of,  70. 

Knowledge,  contrasted  with  cul- 
ture and  efficiency,  11,  12,  13, 
14 ;  not  necessarily  gained  at 
school,  14  ;  has  an  acquired  air, 
19 ;  repetition  of,  necessary,  47  ; 
suited  to  childhood,  47. 

Laboratory  (see  Method). 

Languages,  home-teaching  of, 
96. 

Learning,  outline  of,  would  be 
useful,  39  ;  outline  of,  would  in- 
clude, etc.,  40 ;  manner  of,  is 
all-important,  54 ;  pedagogic 
theory  of  early,  69  ;  the  little 
child's  way  of,  92. 

Literature,  English,  home  teaching 
of,  93. 

Lying,  maxim  of,  148. 

Malice,  maxim  of,  158. 

Maxims  of  Discipline,  133 ;  outline 

of,  159. 
Memory,  what  it  is,  57. 
Method,     laboratory,     pedagogic 

theory  of,  73. 
Mind  (see   Intellect),  what  it  is, 

58 ;  use  of,  in  thought,  59 ;  slow 

to  move,  122, 141;  to  be  guided, 


135 ;  dwarfed  by  unchildish 
pleasure,  179. 

Mood,  maxim  of,  158. 

Moral,  as  distinguished  from  men- 
tal, 60 ;  purpose,  114,  132 ; 
sense,  117  ;  training  comes  from 
example,  126  ;  considerations 
objective,  127  ;  judgment,  132  ; 
all  injunctions  become,  156 ; 
pleasures  injurious  to  morals, 
182. 

Mother  (see  Parents),  her  idea  of 
her  child's  life,  22 ;  thinks  she 
cannot  teach,  90 ;  can  make  all 
a  child's  beginnings,  91 ;  teaches 
by  sharing  interests,  101;  guards 
health,  201. 

Motives  (see  Aims),  for  education, 
13;  for  study,  16;  of  good 
school,  18;  suitable  to  childhood, 
32 ;  suitable  to  youth,  35 ;  suit- 
able to  home  training,  38 ;  for 
early  learning,  43  ;  for  vacation 
study,  43  ;  for  tasks,  44 ;  social, 
116;  maxim  of  base,  146;  for 
keeping  Sunday,  194  ;  for  regu- 
lating amusements,  196. 

Nagging,  maxim  of,  146. 

Natural,  necessity,  161 ;  condition, 
161. 

Nerves,  increase  in  diseases  of, 
160 ;  were  adjusted  to  civiliza- 
tion, 161  ;  weak,  162  ;  become 
more  responsive,  171 ;  respon- 
sibility for  weakness  of,  176; 
cause  of,  weakness  in  children, 
176;  need  wholesome  youth, 
182  ;  specially  excitable  in  girls, 
185 ;  injured  by  congestion,  190  j 


INDEX 


217 


injured  by  stagnation,  191 ; 
broken,  injure  judgment,  196; 
sound,  make  sound  life,  197; 
sapped  by  ill  health,  200. 

Obedience,  reluctance  to,  122; 
maxim  of,  141 ;  foundation  of 
faitb,  143;  replaced  by  unself- 
ishness, etc.,  143  ;  Americans 
chary  in  teaching  of,  164. 

Once,  is  enough,  62,  189. 

Parents  (see  Mother),  not  experts, 
3 ;  dependent  on  experts,  anec- 
dotes, 4 ;  ignorant  about  educa- 
tion, 6  ;  a  wisdom  of,  7 ;  inside 
interest  of  parents,  8 ;  educa- 
tional knowledge  necessary  to, 
8 ;  guard  against  encroachments 
of  school,  15,  21 ;  perhaps  indif- 
ferent and  ignorant,  20 ;  should 
select  child's  reading,  112  ;  often 
unjust  and  stupid,  126 ;  who  do 
not  learn  from  experience,  164  ; 
mislead  children,  168 ;  can  se- 
cure children's  happiness,  173 ; 
under-regulate,  176 ;  must  be  re- 
sponsible, 179;  permit  stagna- 
tion, 195 ;  make  the  childhood, 
196 ;  need  a  clear  vision,  196. 

Perfection  (see  Completeness), 
unnecessary  in  babyhood,  25 ; 
impossible,  26,  45 ;  irrelevant, 
28 ;  possible  in  childhood,  31 ; 
aims  beyond,  35 ;  love  of,  is  uni- 
versal, 136 ;  counsels  of,  148. 

Personal  inducements,  not  to  be 
used  in  school,  15-16. 

Persuasion,  maxim  of,  144. 

Powers,  balanced,  a  purpose  of 


training,  10 ;  using,  is  a  pleasure, 
32;  balanced,  a  final  purpose, 
42 ;  mental,  chiefly  concern  the 
school,  56 ;  list  of  mental,  57 ; 
desire  not  a  mental  power,  57  ; 
aimed  at  by  schooling,  61  ;  spe- 
cial, of  babyhood,  92  ;  constantly 
appearing,  155  ;  well-used,  can 
be  set  aside,  155. 

Practice  and  Precept,  maxim  of, 
156. 

Proportion  (see  Balance),  we  lack 
a  sense  of,  28 ;  not  established 
in  occupations,  163 ;  powers 
should  be  used  in,  175  ;  sense 
of,  179;  gratifying  powers  in, 
195. 

Punishment,  maxim  of,  138 ;  sub- 
stitutes for,  140. 

Racial  Recapitulation,  pedagogic 
theory  of,  71 ;  in  mental  devel- 
opment, 72 ;  in  moral  ideas, 
129. 

Reading,  learning,  by  special 
method,  69 ;  pedagogic  theory 
of  learning,  in  babyhood,  93; 
home  teaching  of,  93  ;  is  process 
of  vicarious  experience,  106 ;  for 
a  little  child,  107 ;  for  older  chil- 
dren, 108 ;  for  youth,  108 ;  un- 
desirable kinds  of,  109 ;  first- 
rate,  is  safe,  110 ;  must  not  be 
too  simple,  111 ;  emulative,  111 ; 
of  magazines  and  newspapers, 
112  ;  school  editions,  112  ;  ear- 
lier classics,  114  ;  different  for 
boys  and  girls,  114  ;  much,  115. 

Repentance,  not  the  cause  of  ex- 
cuses, 157 ;  is  of  three  kinds,  158. 


218 


INDEX 


Results,  of  sensible  distribution  of 
studies,  etc.,  49. 

Rewards,  maxim  of,  147. 

Rules,  universal,  of  conduct,  133 ; 
general,  of  conduct,  138 ;  of  per- 
fection, 148. 

School  (see  Schooling),  a  conven- 
ience, 23 ;  tabulation  of  child's 
life,  23  ;  wastes  time,  45  ;  can- 
not do   all  the  schooling,  51 ; 
should  train  mental  powers,  56 ; 
public,  pedagogic  theory  of,  77 ; 
boarding,  pedagogic  theory  of, 
82 ;    is  seldom  soothing,   176 ; 
dancing,  192;  supplemented  by 
vacation,  193. 
Schooling  (see  School),  question  of, 
perplexingto  parents,6;  methods 
not  the  parent's  affair,  8 ;  must 
foster    thoroughness    and   self- 
reliance,  8 ;  three  points  of  good, 
9 ;  should  be  formal  and  sys- 
tematic, 14  ;    should  not  be  like 
home,  15;   represents  necessity, 
duty,  and  justice,  15  ;  should  be 
enjoyed,  17 ;   is  necessary,  17 ; 
not  synonymous  with  education, 
18 ;  recently  overemphasized,  19 ; 
only  a  part  of  education,  24; 
dominated  by  simplicity,  thor- 
oughness,    and    serenity,    24 ; 
should  supplement   home,    38 ; 
exists  to  provide  mental  training, 
46;  aims  at  self -use  and  balanced 
powers,   61 ;    home,   pedagogic 
theory  of,  76. 
Science,  home  teaching  of,  98. 
Self-aware,  child  should  become, 
152. 


Self-consciousness,  maxim  of,  151. 
Self  -  dependence  (see  Self-reli- 
ance, Efficiency,  Independence, 
Self -use),  of  primary  impor- 
tance, 10  ;  injured  by  elabo- 
rate teaching,  19;  in  amusements, 
188. 
Self-government,  aim  of  discipline, 

116,  129. 
Self-reliance,  must  be  fostered  by 
school,  8  ;  a  purpose  of  training, 
10  ;  should  be  habitual,  64. 
Self -use,  a  purpose  of  training,  10 ; 
a    final    purpose,  42 ;     aim  of 
schooling,  61. 
Sensation,  is  not  thought,  59;  is 

important  to  thought,  60. 
Serenity,  an  essential  of  adequate 
training,  10 ;  necessary  at  school, 
24. 
Silence,  maxim  of,  145. 
Simplicity,   an  essential   of   ade- 
quate training,  10 ;  necessary  at 
school,  24 ;    especially  charac- 
teristic of  babyhood,    25 ;  ex- 
ceedingly necessary    to    child- 
hood, 28. 
Snubbing,  maxim  of,  146. 
Socializing,  a  child,  178. 
Specialists  (see  Experts). 
Stages,  of  development,  169-173. 
Standard,  of  performance  should 
be  high,  63 ;  of  performance  for 
a  child,  103 ;  of  performance, 
maxim  of,  136. 
Stimulus,  such  as  is  desirable  for 
childhood,    32;   undesirable   if 
artificial,  33 ;  such  as  is  desir- 
able for  youth,  35. 
Subconscious  area,  is  large,  63. 


INDEX 


219 


Subjective  view  of  naughtiness, 
etc.,  127. 

Talents,  must  be  fostered,  42. 

Tastes,  must  be  gratified,  42. 

Teacher,  responsible  for  methods, 
8 ;  must  have  wholesome  qual- 
ity, 10 ;  must  not  appeal  to  per- 
sonal affection,  10 ;  must  depend 
on  influences  beyond  himself, 
10  ;  must  not  superimpose  him- 
self, 32. 

Teaching,  may  be  overdone,  27- 
32 ;  methods  of,  good  for  sug- 
gestion, 29;  should  produce 
eagerness,  independence,  accu- 
racy, modesty,  30 ;  is  by  guid- 
ance, not  conveyance,  02 ;  for 
babyhood,  89, —  (arithmetic,  95 ; 
art,  98 ;  English  literature,  93 ; 
exercise,  101 ;  geography,  97 ; 
history,  97 ;  language,  90 ;  read- 
ing, 93;  8cience,98;  writing,  95.) 

Technical  training,  not  necessary 
to  education,  29. 

Temperament,  the  controlling  fac- 
tor, 42 ;  must  be  used,  etc.,  42  ; 
obstacle  to  discipline,  123. 

Theories,  educational,  often  un- 
tenable, always  based  on  some 
fact,  00;  pedagogic,  00,  —  (ado- 
lescence, influence  of,  70  ;  be- 
ginning early,  09 ;  boarding 
schools,  82  ;  coeducation,  80 ; 
culture  studies,  75  ;  early  learn- 
ing, 09  ;  enjoying  school,  71 ; 
examinations,  84;  fallow,  ly- 
ing, 08  ;  foreigners  as  teach- 
ers, 74;  home  schooling,  70; 
in  general,   84;   kindergarten, 


70 ;  laboratory  methods,  73 ; 
learning  to  read,  09  ;  lying  fal- 
low, 08  ;  manual  training,  72 ; 
natural  development,  08 ;  pub- 
lic schools,  77  ;  racial  recapitu- 
lation, 71  ;  read,  learning  to,  09.) 

Thoroughness,  must  be  fostered  by 
school,  8 ;  an  essential  in  ade- 
quate training,  10 ;  necessary  at 
school,  24 ;  of  specialists,  mis- 
leading, 28. 

Thought,  what  it  is,  58 ;  is  not 
sensation,  59  ;  is  meagre  with- 
out knowledge,  104. 

Threats,  maxim  of,  140. 

Time,  distribution  of,  among  sorts 
of  occupations,  51. 

Training  (see  Technical),  essen- 
tials of,  10 ;  powers  acted  on 
by,  10  ;  means  employed  in,  11 ; 
results  of,  11;  must  aim  at  effi- 
ciency, 12,  13,  14 ;  mental,  a 
modern  discovery,  17  ;  too  self- 
conscious  and  elaborate,  19,  20  ; 
if  good  leaves  four  marks,  04  ; 
manual,  pedagogic  theory  of, 
72. 

Tricks,  often  transient,  123 ;  not 
moral  faults,  123 ;  sometimes 
need  punishment,  139;  some- 
times need  rewards,  147. 

Trust,  maxim  of,  135. 

Truth,  hard  to  discern,  149. 

Tutelage  (see  Infancy),  wiser 
treatment  in,  38 ;  not  too  long 
for  preparation,  39. 

Vacation,  must  not  be  empty,  43 ; 
should  supplement  school  work, 
48 ;  must  not  be  stagnant,  193. 


220 


INDEX 


Will,  what  it  is,  57 ;  injured  by 
unchildish  pleasure,  179. 

Words,  use  of,  important  form 
of  education,  46;  not  always 
understood  by  child,  127,  149 ; 
soon  become  cant,  156  ;  stop  in 
memory,  157. 

Work,  independent,  for  children, 
27  ;  interest  in,  should  be  quiet, 
32  ;  should  be  steady,  not  stimu- 
lated,   33 ;     must    be   earnest, 


34 ;  easy  at  youth's  outset,  34 ; 
joy  in,  36;  should  not  be  con- 
stant, 103 ;  customary  for  baby, 
104. 
Writing,  home  teaching  of,  95. 

Youth,  complex  characteristics  of, 
35  ;  schooling  for,  35  ;  interests 
suitable  to,  35 ;  as  a  stage  of 
development,  170 ;  injured  by 
unfit  pleasures,  177. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    •    S    •   A 


ROUTINE  AND  IDEALS 

By  Le  Baron  R.  Briggs,  President  of  Rad- 
cliffe  College. 
i6mo,  $1.00,  net.   Postage  9  cents. 

"  Common  sense  enriched  by  culture  de- 
scribes everything  which  Dean,  or,  as  he 
ought  now  to  be  called,  President,  Briggs 
says  or  writes.  The  genius  of  sanity,  sound 
judgment,  and  high  aim  seems  to  preside 
over  his  thought,  and  he  combines  in  an  un- 
usual degree  the  faculty  of  vision  and  the 
power  of  dealing  with  real  things  in  a  real 
way."  —  The  Outlook,  New  York. 

SCHOOL,  COLLEGE,  AND 
CHARACTER 

By  the  Author  of  "  Routine  and  Ideals." 
i6mo,  $1.00,  net.    Postage  8  cents. 

"  With  the  soundest  good  sense  and  with 
frequent  humorous  flashes,  Dean  Briggs 
takes  students  and  parents  into  his  confi- 
dence, and  shows  them  the  solution  of  col- 
lege problems  from  the  point  of  view,  not 
of  the  'office'  but  of  a  very  clear-think- 
ing, whole-souled  man  in  the  '  office ' "  —  The 
World's  Work,  New  York. 


Published  by  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

Boston  and  New  York 


THE  COLLEGE  MAN  and 
THE  COLLEGE  WOMAN 

By  William  Dewitt  Hyde,  President  of 
Bowdoin  College. 

i2mo,  $1.50,  net.     Postpaid,  $1.61. 

This  book  contains  sixteen  papers  which, 
taken  as  a  whole,  represent  what  twenty- 
years  of  life  in  a  college  and  in  college  ad- 
ministration have  taught  President  Hyde, 
and  what  in  turn  he  has  tried  to  teach  to 
others.  What  college  students  mean  to  be 
and  what  college  graduates  may  be  expected 
to  become  are  questions  which  are  very 
close  to  many  people.  President  Hyde's 
clear-sighted  and  able  handling  of  many 
vexed  questions  on  the  relations  between 
college  life  and  the  world  of  affairs  is  likely 
to  be  widely  read,  coming  as  it  does  from  a 
man  of  so  long  and  brilliant  a  career  in  the 
field  of  education. 


Published    by    HOUGHTON,    MIFFLIN    &    CO. 
Boston  and  New  York 


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